Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
and may include themes that are inappropriate for younger listeners.
Also, I swear a lot.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to Not Quite Right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda.
And welcome to the first Daredevil for the April 2025 Not Quite Right prize,
The first sucker.
These are people who have signed up for the honour and the privilege of being
critiqued on air on the podcast.
So we will read the story, talk about the story, share our thoughts,
and hopefully we'll all learn something together.
Yeah, sounds good.
Although in this particular case, I believe our author has provided their
own reading of the story, which is exciting.
That's right, So as a reminder, the prompts for this round were the word
prompt seal, the action prompt of wiping out,
and the anti prompt of breaking the rule.
Kill Your Darlings.
So our victim this time around is SJ Snyder, and it's SJ's second time around.
That's right.
Some of you might remember SJ's first Daredevil story,
which was Best Laid Plans back in the July 2024 round.
And that was the story about like, a family, right?
A father comes home from work and the child's there with the beans on his plate
and the child has had a little encounter at daycare or whatever it is.
Yeah.
Taking in the the fluffy handcuffs.
That's right.
So the fluffy handcuffs featured prominently in that story.
And that was quite a charming story that just missed out on the long list.
But this time around, SJ did make the long list with the
current story.
First time on the long list for SJ Snyder.
I'm very excited about that, and I hope SJ's cheering as well.
So here is SJ Snyder with her story grimoire she wrote.
How do you mend a broken heart?
Tegan never stopped believing in magic.
Though the instructions for this mundane test were seared into the folds of her
brain, she reread them anyway, certain she got a clean catch.
She dipped the wand into warm amber of liquid,
then placed it face down and set a timer.
On the other side of the vanity.
The grimoire opened, taunting her for ignoring its wisdom.
Magic or not, she glared at it, barely able to focus on the right hand
side of the page.
She'd found it in a second hand bookshop.
When she was 14, she'd written her first diary entry ever,
asking the universe for advice on how to mend a broken heart.
The next day, a spell had appeared on the opposite page.
A list of ingredients, Cookie dough, ice cream and a library book.
Casting instructions.
Eat the ice cream while reading, and an author's note.
A book recommendation.
She spent the weekend engrossed in another world, and on Monday at school,
the boy apologised and wanted to get back together.
Like magic, she'd said no and meant it.
The spell had already worked.
The timer counted down one more minute.
Her spell book brimmed with her requests on the left, page,
responses and spells on the right.
At some point throughout the years, the author's note expanded until it was
most of the page, the spell almost an afterthought.
This book had seen it all, every graduation, breakup, promotion,
wedding, and funeral, a constant companion she couldn't imagine
life without.
Only a few blank pages remained, so she requested more,
but she baulked at paying the cost.
A spell to wipe the slate clean, leaving only memories of her entries,
forgetting the rest, she wrote in the margins.
What if I can't do it?
The familiar script she'd started emulating appeared immediately.
Do you trust me?
Yes, duh.
She rolled her eyes.
But I can't lose you.
You don't need the exact words.
They're already inside you.
You're ready for the next level of magic.
Tegan blinked until her vision cleared.
She was most certainly not ready.
If she were right, this test would turn her life upside down.
How could she give up the lifeline she'd clung to for all these years?
She sucked in a deep breath and flipped over the wand.
2 lines.
I'm pregnant.
I know why now.
You can do this.
Tegan closed the worn cover, hot tears spilling over her lashes and
falling in fat droplets onto the book, massaging them into the fabric.
She sealed the spell, wiping out the past two decades of wisdom
and history.
When she opened it again, the pages were blank.
They may as well have been ripped out of her heart.
It would have hurt less.
She sank to the floor, still clutching the positive test.
She would have to be her own spellbook now.
Youthful handwriting appeared on the left side,
stealing the whale that threatened to burst forth.
Dear Universe, how do you mend a broken heart?
So thanks SJ for your story and SJ Snyder has actually left us a voicemail which
will play for you now.
Hi Ed and Amanda and listeners of the podcast.
This is SJ Snyder back from my second Daredevil experience.
Thought I would explain a little bit of my process for how I tackled the anti
prompt.
So the phrase Kill Your Darlings partially means to cut words before you
send them, words that are meaningful to you but not
necessarily to anyone else.
And then have you ever had to do the writing exercise where you answer the
question, what would you tell your younger self or
write a letter to your future self?
This story is kind of a literal take on that theme.
And so the words are sent before they're cut,
but also in the act of wiping the pages clean,
that's what allows the darlings the relationship with herself to live.
I wish I could answer any other questions you might have or anything else that was
not clear, but I don't know what you think yet.
So thank you so much for the critique.
I love everything about this competition, and I look forward to hearing your
thoughts.
But we do have some questions for you, and we'll get into those as we talk about
the story, and also we'll get into the prompts a bit
later on.
So thank you for sharing your perspective on that.
So this was an easy inclusion for the long list from Amanda and I.
Hmm.
Dean didn't gel so well with the story and had a few criticisms,
but I think some of those criticisms are valid.
Yeah.
And we can talk about what you can do to potentially elevate it.
I think it's interesting 'cause I think it just goes to show how subjective this
whole thing is.
And what you write, like how a reader receives it is not
necessarily a given.
Like you, you don't know how different readers are
going to receive.
Yeah, your writing.
So I think that's really interesting.
But certainly I really like this story and it's not the kind of thing I would
normally be drawn to.
Yeah, you know, fantasy kind of story.
But I think it was that emotional heart that gripped me.
Yeah.
And it trades a bit of a line because I don't think it's really fantasy, right?
It's it has that magical realism.
It has that magical element of it, but I think all of that sets the
character up well.
And there's that interesting, you know, line of the pregnancy test as as a wand
and like that ambiguity there.
But let's get into it.
Let's get into the story and break it down.
Can we just start by maybe saying what a grimoire is?
Because.
Yeah, because it's not necessarily obvious,
but basically it's a spell book, right.
So a book of magical knowledge, especially 1 containing spells,
is the definition that I found.
And that's not a word I was familiar with.
But I did enjoy the Little Murder She Wrote,
kind of like reference in the title.
So book of spells, which I mean, becomes evident,
but it wasn't a word that I knew.
Well, you never went through a witchy phase as
a teenager.
Well, my, my writers group is called the Coven.
But I'm the least witchy.
OK, Most ****** least witchy, you know.
OK, anyway, let's get into the story.
All right, so the opening line of the story is Tegan
never stopped believing in magic.
So I think that's a strong opening line.
Like, it sets the tone of the story and the
theme.
And I think it's almost like, remember, we're talking about Blake Snyder and
theme stated.
This is almost like a theme stated.
Yeah.
Sentence right up front.
Worth calling out to that SJ has named the character as the very first word
actually in this story.
I feel like I've got to clarify a little bit about that.
So I think there's been some confusion, people talking about and some of the
stories we've received.
I'm like, oh, I think I might have maybe sent out a
little bit of a mixed message or confusing message around naming your
character.
Yes, I have a little thing about naming your
character in like the first line or two, but it's not necessarily,
as this story has done, really explicitly saying this is a
character's name as like the very first word.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with that by any
means.
That's not what I'm saying.
I guess what's essential to me is not necessarily a name,
but setting up your character very clearly and a name is one way of doing
that very quickly.
So when I say people should name their character,
you don't always have to actually say the name, and many stories don't,
and they're still effective.
It's just one way of giving us a bit of information.
It's like an introduction to your character.
If you can do that in another way, I think it can be just as effective.
So I guess I just wanted to say it's not like I'm not that **** about it.
I'm not necessarily looking for a name in those opening lines and then marking a
story down if it doesn't have it.
I'm just looking for that introduction to the character,
which very rarely wouldn't matter, right?
Like it's, it's almost always vitally important for
us to start connecting with the character very quickly.
I do have a problem, though, when people never name their character
throughout the story, right?
Like when it when they're eternally referenced as the man or he and she.
I feel like you do need to put a name there just to make that person a bit more
of a complete person.
Even if you don't say it up front.
Like the context is really important.
Sometimes it's just not the right thing to do to say it in the first sentence.
Sometimes it is, yeah.
I think point being like, it's OK not to, But the reason we sort of say it so much
is because it's often the quickest and most effective way to just very quickly,
like, that's our character.
Great.
We know they're important because they've got a name and we can go from there.
And it's given us any information about like,
their gender and approximate age or like the time period they're in,
the kind of genre of story.
All of those things can be conveyed with a name.
But yeah, anyway, all that aside, like, yay, tick, we've got a name, but it's not.
It's not not all about that.
But I do think in this case, great, we've got our character right up front.
Yeah.
So I think the other things this opening line does along the same line.
So Tegan never stopped believing in magic.
It implies the age of the character there.
You know, obviously that they've grown up now that
they that they would potentially not still believe in magic.
It also hints at maybe a potential conflict that that will arise.
Yeah, through that of a hooking question.
It is like, okay, well, what's that all about?
Like, why not?
And yeah, and what's coming next?
So I mean, look, it's a bit of a telling line where we're
saying we're given some information directly about Tegan.
We're not having it shown through action, but I actually don't mind it here.
It's just a kind of a opener because for all those reasons,
it sets up the character, it sets up your tone.
And, you know, it is that theme stated opener.
It's efficient, which you need to be in flash fiction.
Yeah.
All right.
So one thing it doesn't do, which I think is missing from like,
the opening here is give us a little bit more about the context, like the setting.
And, you know, it does become apparent as the story goes
on.
But remember, we're reading a lot of stories and
stories can happen in fantasy realms, in sci fi realms, in the real world.
We don't know.
It would be great to come in and understand this is the real world because
it is the real world, right?
She's doing a pregnancy test.
It's not a fantasy world.
So it would be good to have a little bit more setting in that first.
And I think that's a good rule of thumb too.
So in my opinion, in the first paragraph, you really should be answering for the
reader those questions of who, which is what we've just established
about the character's name and so on.
The when, when are we, is it contemporary?
Is it something said in the past?
Is it something said in the future?
Like roughly when are we?
And also where usually a setting.
And we describe that as dropping us into the scene.
And I think this story does it well.
But I think, as you say, like a bit more of the setting would
probably help us get a sense of that time as well as the where.
And.
And now we're visualising it.
So we're not just kind of floating up above this story.
We're now in that room with her.
Yeah.
You know, obviously this story made the long list,
So it's not like, OK, big fail or anything like that.
It's more just like, okay, I think generally speaking,
that stuff helps immerse a reader in a story a little more.
So the story goes on.
Though the instructions for this mundane test were seared into the folds of her
brain.
She reread them anyway, certain she got a clean catch.
She dipped the wand into warm amber liquid,
then placed it face down and set a timer.
So I love that you've opened here with action like we've had that one opening
line and then you've gone straight into like the action something something's
happening.
That's great.
And I also love that single effect that where introducing the concept of magic
and we bring in this wand, right?
So that's great.
So we find out later that that the wand is part of a pregnancy test.
And like you're drawing that connection between magic and like this wand on a
first read through this story, though, obviously you don't get that.
And it's presented as a twist later on.
And we've said this before about stories like bring the reader along.
You know, I think this story would be a lot better
served by stating that upfront, like making that connection stronger.
I agree.
And I think the use of wand is great.
So I wouldn't remove that.
I think that's really perfect.
But I think it could be made more clear that it's a pregnancy test in that
paragraph.
And I actually agree with you fully.
Like that first reading when it's not clear, I'm thinking this is a fantasy,
you know, and I and that's intentional.
And I'm not saying like that's wrong, like that's we want that.
But I think, as you say, take the reader along with that,
keep us in the loop on that so we can appreciate that juxtaposition of like the
real world and this this magical world.
It's a vital part of the story.
And maybe it just needed a little bit more,
a little bit more detail to see what's happening.
Yeah.
Because you're presenting the wand as a metaphor, right?
It's a magical element.
But as a reader coming into this without the context,
it doesn't read as a metaphor.
It reads as a literal wand.
Yeah.
You know, so you lose kind of that effect that
you're going for.
Yeah.
Which is what we're describing now and what we like about it.
And you want the reader to like that right away.
Right.
And to get the clever reference right away.
One of the things that this story does is have that twist at the end where it says,
well, actually it was a pregnancy test.
The problem is that by doing that, you, you lose all of that engagement that you
could have had throughout with, hey, this is a this is a pregnancy test.
And we're anxious about it.
And, and yeah, bring us along with that anxiety and that,
you know, the stakes need to be there.
We don't have the stakes.
We just we have a wand and we have this idea of magic.
And wouldn't it be a lot more powerful to have like this whole magical subtext of
the story alongside all of these real world issues that she's grappling with?
But we don't get the real world issues till later on in the story.
So the next line on the other side of the vanity, the grimoire opened,
taunting her for ignoring its wisdom.
Magic or not, she glared at it, barely able to focus on the right hand
side of the page.
So I think that's a really important moment in the story.
And it's sort of glossed over a little bit because for us as readers living in
the real world, and it's still not clear here,
are we in the real world or not?
Like, we've got a character called Tegan, which is not a magical sort of sounding
name, not the kind of name you might expect in
a fantasy.
And now you're showing this book of spells opening and and almost taunting
her.
I feel like we need to be taken along kind of logically or emotionally with
that.
Like, how does Tegan feel about that?
Like obviously she feels taunted, but if she's a real person in the real
world and there's a book of spells opening,
I guess me coming to that as a reader, well,
a book of spells doesn't just open that's that's a magical thing.
You kind of need to set that up a little bit more so that it feels real to me.
Yeah.
I think if you just say it happened without any sort of setup of that magic,
it just feels like, hang on, what?
And I think just a little bit more detail about the magic, like,
watching that happen.
So not just the book opened.
Yeah.
But like, maybe visually, how does that happen in a way?
Like when you describe it, I can feel that magical thing happening
almost.
Yeah.
That was one of the things I struggled with this story is understanding like how
much of it was real, how much of it was kind of metaphorical,
how much of it was inside Tegan's head.
So we're presented with this opening line of that she still believes in magic,
but then we're giving these these descriptions of real magic actually
happening and taking place.
So it's not that she believes in magic, it's that the magic is actually happening.
But now we're kind of second guessing ourselves because of the fact that she
believes it and things that will come to light further on.
So we're never really sure if it's real or not.
And I think that's OK to have that, you know,
But I think maybe a little bit more clarity as an author in terms of like,
what are you presenting to us?
Yeah.
And then letting us make our decision, I suppose.
Yeah.
But being careful with the facts that you're presenting.
Yeah.
To allow for different interpretations.
So when this grimoire opens, we have the the description that it
taunts her for ignoring its wisdom.
I feel like we don't have that context yet.
I feel like that that needs to come in a bit later when we actually understand
what the grimoire's all about, you know, how is it taunting her?
To us as a reader coming into this?
It's just.
It's a book.
Yeah.
It's open.
It's taunting her.
In what way is it is it speaking?
It can't really glare at her.
It's a book, you know.
Is it?
Yeah.
Like we.
We just don't know what that means.
It is a telling line and I don't think we have the context yet to really understand
what that line means.
So I would like that to come a little bit later,
or maybe not even as a line a little bit later,
but have that idea of it taunting her coming a little bit later once we
understand what the grimoire is all about.
So now we do get a description, like some back story about the grimoire
which was found in the second hand bookshop when she was 14.
And there's some magical things that happen here.
Like she starts asking for advice, writing in it,
and then spells appear on the other page.
And like, clearly a magical thing, you know,
that that can't be explained by any natural means, right?
So we assume that the grimoire here is magic.
There's the description of a boy that she broke up with, and she's heartbroken.
And the book helps them get back together.
But then she said no.
I think that was a really fun little bit of back story there.
Like, obviously that use of, you know, cookie dough ice cream and reading a book.
And that's how.
People get over a breakup that kind of, you know, indulging in those comforts,
you know, and so the spell now again, being a very real world thing like that
is how people get over breakups often is just, you know,
having cookie dough ice cream and watching Netflix on repeat or whatever.
So I think again, that was nice if we talk about post
single effect, like that's a great juxtaposition of the
real world and the magical world coming together.
And I think that was a nice flow on and also great to establish what comes later,
I guess about her journey as a woman and starting off there at 14,
like sort of puberty kind of age.
That's really, I think that that works really well.
That's I think that was a good choice.
Yeah, that's true.
So we go from, I guess we go from this wand and now
we've gone into this description about the the grimoire.
The wand has been left a little bit hanging in this in this story.
So from a reader's perspective, I feel like I'm not really sure what I'm
focusing on.
It's a little bit maybe a bit too much back story,
like it's sort of taken us a little bit too much.
You could maybe edit that down to keep us more in the momentum of the scene.
But you know, I wouldn't say it's wasted.
I do think the detail is relevant in it and it fits.
I think the the problem for me is that, I mean,
the grimoire is very central to the story, obviously.
It's what it's pretty much what the story is about.
The wand is left hanging only because we don't yet understand it,
and we're waiting for the explanation of what that wand represents.
And then we kind of get diverted along a different path and it comes back at the
end.
But yeah, going back to the point of, you know, bring the reader along,
if we'd known that she's waiting for the results of the pregnancy test,
then we're we're progressing through the story,
but not knowing that we're kind of a little bit waiting for exactly what are
the stakes here.
And so the next line is the the timer counted down one more minute.
So we have like a ticking clock, but we don't yet really understand what
the stakes are.
I think by this stage I was starting to to clue onto it,
but it still wasn't clear.
So, yeah, I think I would have liked more clarity.
I do think that was great for keeping us in the scene, though.
We're straight back into the action.
We've had a bit of back story and arguably, maybe, you know,
you could edit that down or not, but like, we're right back into it.
And I think that's important.
And then we return to the the spell book or the the grimoire with some more
description and brimmed with her request on the left page,
response on the right page.
And throughout the years, it's building with all of this
information.
We get this picture being painted that it's like a diary,
but it's also been her support network for those years.
So like the importance of the book is being shown to US.
One thing that I found, I guess a little bit confusing,
and I don't know if you did or not, Ed, but it mentions the author's note and it
says the author's note expanded until it was most of the page.
And I wasn't clear who is the author because, you know,
she's writing on one side and then the book's writing back on the other side.
So when it says the author's note, I'm actually not sure who that is.
Like initially it was book recommendations, for example,
are they recommendations coming from the spell book or are they her own?
Like she's making notes like learning along the way.
And it's a tiny thing, but it did Take Me Out of the story for a
minute because I'm like, hang on, what does that mean exactly?
So you just want to tidy up any of those little distractions?
I don't think it would take much to clarify that.
But having said that, I'm not sure necessarily that it adds
value either.
I think the focus is more, she writes her diary entry,
the spell book responds with the spell.
And I think that should maybe be the focus.
Another thing I just want to call out from that paragraph is that it's sort of,
it's going across these life events, right?
It's talking about every graduation, breakup, promotion, wedding and funeral.
I guess I just had a little question in my mind about the funeral because if this
is a spell book, I'm sort of wondering, well,
why couldn't she say for the person that died?
Or like, where was the spell?
I don't know, to prevent that happening.
Or like how powerful is this book?
I suppose is is the question that came up.
And I'm not sure in a piece of flash fiction,
you have time to sort of deal with that life and death situation.
That's not sort of the point of this story.
So I just wonder maybe whether, especially if we consider that she's a
young woman, we don't necessarily need to go into the
funeral side of things.
I don't know.
That's that's a tiny little comment.
But I suppose again, just that little distraction of like,
well, why you still going through these
horrible times?
Like, I guess it comes back to that point of
not really understanding the world that we're in and having a few too many
questions about it.
Like, is this real magic?
Is one of them or is this like a coping mechanism for her?
Is it is she actually writing both sides?
Yeah, because there's a little note in there
that she's her own writing has is resembling the writing on the right hand
side.
So we're to read into that to say that, well,
she's this is like a therapist for herself where she's like answering her
own questions.
Or is there something actually magical about that?
You know, the the opening of the book at the start
of the story could have been like the wind or something.
You know, it didn't have to be something magical.
So we have other explanations for these events.
So it'll be good to understand, I guess, where we are,
even if it's just like a subtle hint to to help us kind of move into One
Direction or another.
But yeah, I think at this point in the story,
we we have the back story about the grimoire that's pretty heavily developed.
We have this, you know, hanging detail about the wand.
But I think what is missing at this point, and we're kind of at the midway point of
the story is like setting up the stakes, right?
Because we, we we know that she's got a timer.
We don't know what the timer is for.
We can guess maybe you've guessed it at this stage, maybe you haven't.
There's obviously some tension there, but we can't feel the tension because we
don't really know what's going on.
So I think there just needs to be a little bit more focused on setting up
that payoff, setting up that ending.
Yeah.
Setting up the dramatic question.
That's what you should be doing at the start of a story.
Like, what is the question that this story will
answer by the end?
And you don't have to state it as a very out there question.
It doesn't need to be that explicit, I suppose.
But certainly, if we knew she was waiting for the
results of a pregnancy test, then the question is ever evident already.
And also the what you want to leave the reader with at the end, right.
Is there an emotional impact?
Is there, like, anxiety about the pregnancy?
Is it happiness?
You know, what's that emotion that you're trying to
say?
Yeah, We don't know sort of how old she is or,
you know, is this a good thing?
Although I will say there is a tiny hidden detail about that I think in the
story that maybe deserved a little more emphasis.
And this is where we're talking about setting up those stakes.
Earlier on in the story, though, the instructions for this mundane test
were seared into the folds of her brain.
She reread them anyway.
OK, so we imagine she's been trying for a
baby for a while.
That's what I might imagine is the subtext of that.
If she's the instructions are seared into her brain,
then it suggests that she's done this a few times before on purpose.
Well, there's actually, I mean, there's an alternative explanation,
which is that she's done it once and it's been positive and she's in denial and
she's tried it maybe more times to get a different answer, I guess.
And that's like that subtext.
I guess you can read into it what you like.
But I think that probably, again, that piece of information,
if we knew she desperately wanted this to be a yes,
but she was feeling anxious about it, then of course,
we're all waiting on the edge of our seats to see if it's yes.
I mean, if she wants it to be a no, that's equally interesting.
But yeah, I think that detail was kind of hidden.
And especially because we didn't know it was a pregnancy test at the time,
that doesn't become obvious.
So I think it would be nice to kind of maybe draw a little bit more attention to
that before we proceed.
OK, so the next line, only a few blank pages remained.
So she requested more.
But she baulked at paying the cost.
A spell to wipe the slate clean, leaving only memories of her entries for
getting the rest she wrote in the margins.
What if I can't do it?
The familiar script she'd started emulating appeared immediately.
Do you trust me?
Yes, duh.
She rolled her eyes.
But I can't lose you.
So this was an interesting development for me.
It raised a lot of questions, like the cost.
So as I understood this, she's filled her book to the brim with,
like, all of these requests over the years.
And it's been a big part of her life.
She's carried it with her.
She's, you know, it's, it's like a, a personal history of her own life.
She's out of pages.
She's in uncharted territory.
She's found out she's pregnant and she needs to ask the book for help basically
is the implication.
But she's out of pages, It's full.
So the cost is that she has to restart the book to wipe the slate clean,
erase everything that's in there and start again.
And she doesn't want to do that because it's part of her right.
So the book now, though, is also speaking to her directly as it
was writing.
Yeah.
Although it's interesting because it says, do you trust me?
We imagine that's written.
And she says, yes, da.
She rolled her eyes, but I can't lose you.
Well, does she write?
Yes, da, but I can't lose you.
Yeah.
It's not clear.
I think it would help to make that a little bit more clear.
I guess what I'm not clear about here is the stakes.
Like, what does losing you mean?
Because she's not losing the book at all.
She's just getting more pages.
She's restarting at this point and she's restarting with like a blank slate.
She still retains, as the book says, like the memory of her life,
but she doesn't have the physical record.
But she can start new and she can, she still has that book as a part of her
life to ask questions and presumably get answers.
Like that's that's the cost that's being paid.
What seems to happen later, though, is that she's actually losing the book,
which is a bit confusing for me.
Yeah, I agree.
That was a little bit confusing.
It leaves only the memories of her entries for getting the rest.
So for getting, I guess if it's a friend, it's become a friend,
like forgetting the responses of of this friend for all this time.
But as you say, the friends still there.
You can just be like your first entry can be.
So just give me a quick summary of you've just been using chat.
But you know, you can like you say, you haven't really lost this friend in
the book.
And so, yeah, the stakes are kind of muddied a little
bit.
I think this idea of running out of pages at exactly this time is incredibly
compelling.
And I think maybe forget about wiping the slate clean.
Like just stick with we're running out of pages.
What's your last question going to be?
You've got one page left kind of thing like, where are we going to leave this?
You're going to have to leave this friend behind who's provided you with all this
advice.
And that is the emotionally resonant part of this story, right?
Like that when you become a parent parent for the first time,
all of a sudden you're like, it's uncharted territory.
It's completely uncharted territory.
Despite the fact that you may have your own parents around,
you have other friends who've had children, that sort of thing,
you still feel very like lost at sea.
And that is incredibly compelling, that feeling.
And so I think maybe this story would have been better served by leaving it
with that, Like, let's let's raise the stakes.
You know, you don't get to wipe it clean.
You don't get to keep half of the memories you you've got.
This is it.
This is your last page, and then you're on your own kind of thing.
So I guess that would be my wish for this story is maybe going a little bit harder
on the stakes.
Yeah.
I agree that that makes that makes a lot more sense.
And, you know, it would help if we knew that she's
pregnant as well, because then you can reinforce that idea
at this stage in the story.
Yeah.
And this line, which is you don't need the exact words.
They're already inside you.
You're ready for the next level of magic.
Like I think that's the moving thing, right When you come to that realisation
of like it's on you now.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
So this is exchange with the book about how can she give up this lifeline that
she most needed.
She sucked in a deep breath and flipped over the wand 2 lines.
I'm pregnant.
And then the book says I know why now you can do this.
This is like A twist that comes in.
And so we've talked about unearned twist before.
I don't think this is an unearned twist in that same way.
It's not like A and it was all a dream.
No, because you've got the clues, right.
You've got you've got the foreshadowing.
We talked about the wand and the amber liquid like it's there.
I think what that does is it makes the story like as if it's about the twist and
that that's what we as readers are meant to take from it.
And to me, what's far more compelling about this
story is this idea of you're on your own now.
As soon as you have a child, like forget it.
Now you've it's you've just got to figure out everything on your own and it's this
whole world you've got to learn.
And the learning curve is very steep.
And I think that's the compelling part of this story.
And I think when you're sort of pointing all your clues towards this twist,
you're sort of missing the opportunity to point those clues towards actually that
emotional impact, which is what the story to me is all
about.
Like that's the heart of this story.
So yeah, I mean, I feel like we've made our point like,
yeah, like, you know, we didn't like that that got left to the
end.
And.
And I think that's an easy fix, to be honest.
And I think if allowed the emotion to develop and the emotion to be like the
climax of this story, then that would have a bigger impact for
sure.
All right, so we move into, I guess, the conclusion.
Tegan closed the worn cover, hot tears spilling over her lashes,
falling in fat droplets onto the book, massaging them into the fabric.
She sealed the spell, wiping out the past two decades of wisdom
and history.
And I love the like the visual aspect of that and and the tears spilling and like
all of that being very active.
She opened it again.
The pages were blank.
They made as well being ripped out of her heart.
It would have hurt less.
She sang to the floor, still clutching the positive test.
She would have to be her own spell book now.
And that's really like the crux of it that you're getting at.
That's that's the moment that you want to focus in on the fact that she's her own
spell book.
I think some of these other elements that we've talked about do detract from that
impact, like the whole idea of, well, you know, the, the pages are empty,
but now she's got the book to to help her be the spellbook.
Why is she her own spellbook when she's just, she's got a fresh,
she's got a fresh spellbook.
So that that bit is detracting because it's confusing.
And I agree with your your recommendation to like ditch the spellbook and be your
own spellbook.
Yeah, and I think there is some really
beautiful emotional detail here, like, you know,
you took describing how she's feeling and reacting to this.
And I I think that was resonant.
I feel like that was that felt real and really lovely.
And having that here, like she's crying and, you know,
this is at the climax of the story that that deep emotion that's very appropriate
and I think works really well.
So the final two lines, and I have some questions,
I guess about the interpretation of these lines,
and they are youthful handwriting appeared on the left side,
stealing the whale that threatened to burst forth.
Dear Universe, how do you mend a broken heart?
So what I do like about that is the circularity of that kind of coming back
to the opening.
That was the first question that she asked the grimoire at the start of the
story.
I'm not clear on who's doing that writing because she's wailing in the background
and youthful handwriting appears like is that is that her story coming back?
Is that like her unborn?
I don't know, like what what is that getting to?
And and also the question that's being asked, how do you mend a broken heart?
Doesn't seem to be pertaining to the scene we're in at the moment, right.
She's not dealing with a broken heart right now.
She's dealing with this kind of new found, I don't know, agency in her life.
Yeah, I agree.
I think the the callback is great.
And I, I think what it's implying is that her
writings coming back like that, the questions that she asked are,
are rewriting like we've got the blank pages.
And now because she was told, oh, you'll keep the memories of yours,
but not the answers kind of thing.
So I don't, I don't actually know.
You're right.
It's like, is she writing it again?
Is it, is it just reappearing as it did, but with maybe the blank pages on the
other side?
It's you're right.
It's it's not clear.
And I think that's a problem.
And we've already established like maybe that's not the right angle here and that
maybe we could have just the book has run out of pages and that emotional resonance
could still be there.
She's crying and she seals that final spell of basically becoming her own
spellbook, not the the spell of erasing everything
that had come before.
And as you say, this question of the universe,
how do you mend a broken heart?
Like that's that's beautifully like deep.
That's that's the kind of line that is great to end a story and it does feel
satisfying.
But when you sort of take a second to think about it, yeah,
it doesn't really fit the scene because we imagine that she's happy about being
pregnant.
Like, that's sort of what I took from this,
that she'd been trying.
And she's like, why now?
And she's kind of seems she's at an appropriate age.
She's like 34, right?
But again, like, it's not really clear.
We don't know if she wanted to be pregnant or not.
We're guessing.
I'm putting my own spin on it by reading it, which is fine.
But I think, yeah, maybe ending with that idea of her being
her own spellbook now is probably a more appropriate to end.
I guess.
We don't know, like, apart from the fact that that she's,
you know, that underlying emotional impact of,
you know, she has to deal with her own **** now.
We don't know how she feels about it and we don't know enough about her.
And it would have been good to have a few, a little bit more of her.
Does she have a husband?
Is she doing IVF?
What is her story?
What is she want to get out of that?
And also that question, how do you mend a broken heart?
I think that the circularity could have been enhanced if the question that she
was asking as like a teenager was now reframed.
It was a different question thrown in a new light as a, you know,
it could be like, how do I go on?
Or, you know, what do I do now or something like that.
Well, if we think about, I heard this word recently,
I've I have heard it before, but came up recently.
So we've got puberty, right, which is for everyone,
but in this case for women like a very important time and,
and a very confusing time and, and a time when you feel really lost at
sea, I would say for most women or girls at
that age.
And then again, and apparently the word for it is
matrescence.
So when you become a mother, like that's its own kind of life stage
and actually comes with a whole bunch of changes, including again,
hormonal changes, but like physical changes in your body
that like basically change the chemical nature of who you are as a person.
And of course, all, all the social stuff that goes along with
it too.
So you could in fact, have that kind of same feeling, right?
Yeah.
Reflected like when you hit puberty, like you're becoming a woman for the
first time and then becoming a mother is like a whole other thing,
but the same in so many ways.
So you could, you could go down that path.
But you know, there were a lot of things that I really
loved about this story, which is why it made the long list run.
I think essentially we've gone on and on here,
but we've pretty much just highlighted maybe like 3 things that we thought could
have been improved to really make this story hit home.
But it really was already a beautiful story.
I think that that emotional action throughout is beautiful.
I think the language that's used flow, like it flows really nicely.
You feel like in it, you're in this story the whole time.
Like the tone is consistent throughout.
That juxtaposition of the magic in the real life is great.
Like that single effect of that is wonderful.
And a really nice balance too of like dialogue,
or in this case writing and action.
So a lot to love about this story.
Yeah.
And I don't want to give the impression that we didn't like it.
As we said in the outset, it was an easy yes for the long list.
And yeah, those were the things I liked about it as
well.
I really liked that idea of the youthful magical thinking only getting you up to a
point and then you have to be on your own.
And there is a stage in life where you have to kind of abandoned those things.
And yes, motherhood might be the point where you
realise I've got to kind of take control.
And that underlying theme you mentioned, the dialogue and the balance.
I think that one thing that worked really well here is that you've got a scene with
one person in a room, basically.
It's a very internal type of scenario, but it does feel very active and there's
obviously the character of the grimoire that's been inserted into it that makes
it that gives it that dynamic nature.
So I thought that was great.
And the other thing I love about this is like there is a feeling of authenticity
here.
There is something the real that's being expressed emotionally.
It doesn't feel contrived.
It doesn't feel like just making it up for the drama.
It feels like an expression.
So I really like that about this story as well.
Definitely.
It's definitely a relatable feeling too, which always helps too.
Like if you want your reader to appreciate your story,
then making it something that's relatable is going to help that.
Because it's like I can already I can picture.
To myself in this scene very much so all right,
so we'll just wrap it up with I guess the prompts and the word prompt seal we have
the use here was sealing a spell, which is a perfectly fine use.
The action of wiping out seems to be here like wiping the slate clean,
which I think is where a lot of this comes from.
You know, the difficulty here is that clearly you
had this idea about wiping that slate clean with the grimoire,
and now we're saying don't do that.
Well, yeah, that didn't quite mesh with exactly the
the theme that you're trying to go for, and that's a problem.
So I think that's a great approach, like wiping the slate clean.
But I think once you've gone through that draught process to the end,
that may have been a darling that you had to kill like and and maybe she just wiped
something else.
I don't know if that the wipe didn't quite work exactly.
Yeah.
And she does in fact, sort of wipe the tears into the fabric as
well.
Massages them into the fabric.
You could have used that.
I think I would say about the the word and action prompt.
They are put together here in in one sentence.
And I did find that a little bit sort of because we're looking for these words,
not actively, but we're, you know, they're standing out to us basically in
the judging.
And so that that was a little bit obvious, like a little clunky maybe just in terms
of like those words are really standing out to us.
And so maybe just finding a way to weave them in a little bit more seamlessly
would have been nice.
It's definitely not a deal breaker because outside of this competition,
those words aren't sticking out right?
They don't have that same kind of obviousness to them.
But I would say probably a lot of people this round of the comp use the expression
wiping out like or wipe out or wiped out when maybe you could have chosen
different words and it still would have met the action prompt.
Because we say in the rules like you don't need to use this exact wording.
We just need that action.
And I think this is one story that a use of different words there might have just
read a little bit more smoothly just to us as judges.
Again, it's not going to stand out for other
people who are reading this.
And same with sealed the spell.
It was just that little bit maybe sort of forced in there.
Not a deal breaker by any means, but something to look out for.
Just trying to make that flow and feel seamless and not feel like it's been sort
of tacked on a little bit.
Yeah.
But yeah, what about the anti prompt?
We're lucky we've got the benefit of SJ's own words here,
because I think without that I would be struggling to work out what exactly the
darlings it's not.
It's not obvious that approach.
Yeah.
And it is a bit of like an unusual approach too.
It's not something that a lot of people did.
It's a a unique interpretation.
Yeah.
And so the Darlings in this case, as we heard earlier,
were essentially cutting those words, keeping the words,
cutting them later kind of thing.
Yeah.
Allowing her own relationship with herself to live is basically what it
means.
Yeah.
So I think I probably would have interpreted the Darlings as having
something to do directly with the grimoire.
Right.
And and killing that, darling, but allowing it also to be there.
Yeah.
And I think we probably took a pretty relaxed approach to the anti prompt in
this round because, you know, everybody's just really coming at it from
their own place.
And I love that.
I love that you can find your own inspiration to create something that
maybe you would never have thought to create otherwise.
And I think that's a perfectly good interpretation.
But like you, I wouldn't have necessarily known or been
able to interpret that without that explanation.
I don't think it's necessary for that to be the case.
The story is sort of self evident.
Yeah.
It's not one of the stories that we read where, you know,
you can say that it embraced the anti prompt or was built around the anti
prompt, but still, like, the vibe is there.
The idea of a darling being killed is definitely part of this.
So thanks, SJ, for your story.
I hope.
I hope we gave you a little bit of insight into our thought process.
Like it was a great story.
It was easy inclusion in the long list.
I thought it was a satisfying story.
You know, I enjoyed it.
I did think it like that emotional heart was there.
And I think sometimes that's like what we're searching for.
And so many stories like might be clever or might have a good idea,
but lack that emotional resonance.
And this one really had that.
And I think that does stand out certainly to me.
Totally agree.
And congratulations on making your first long list.
Yes, well done.
I'm so proud of you.
So we'll be back in a week's time with our next Daredevil.
And until then, right on, right on.
We hope you enjoyed this special Daredevil episode of Not Quite Right.
If you have thoughts on this story, follow us on social media and join the
conversation.
And if you'd like to participate in the next round of the competition,
head over to ourwebsite@notquiteright.com.
That's WRITE.