“magic school with teeth and rivalry, and an underdog with a mind of her own”
—Janny Wurts, author of The Wars of Light and Shadow
Tag: spfbo
STEVE-Published Fantasy Blog Off
Written by
Delilah Waan
As of 2025, I permanently moved over to Bluesky and effective from 17 January 2026, I have deleted all of my Twitter posts due to the changed terms of service.
Some of my most popular threads, such as this one, I have preserved on my website (with minor edits, for accessibility and ease of reading) for posterity.
Back when I was working on a Broadway musical, I noticed an interesting pattern in the names of some famous composers: Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Flaherty…
Surely just a weird coincidence? At any rate, I joked for a while that, maybe, to find success I ought to change my name to “Stephanie”.
Fast forward a few years.
I enter Petition into the 2023 Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off contest and notice another interesting pattern in the names of the fellow authors in the SPFBO9 cohort: Steve Hugh Westenra, Stephen Wolberius, Steven William Hannah, Steve D Wall, Steven Paul Watson…
🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨
Presenting the thread that nobody asked for: every SPFBO entry from SPFBO1 through to SPFBO9 under a “Steve”, “Steven”, “Stephen”, “Stefan”, “Stevens”, “Stephanie”, etc in the byline.
—Delilah.
There’s 5 Ste/ve/n/phens in #SPFBO9. I wondered how many were in #SPFBO total.
BEHOLD the 🧵 nobody asked for: every entry under a “Steve”, “Steven”, “Stephen”, “Stefan”, “Stevens”, “Stephanie”, etc in the byline.
(h/t @EASchechter for the @Mark__Lawrence meme idea)
I’ll start with the OG cohort in #SPFBO1 & work my way up to the current #SPFBO9 to feature:
Author headshot (if they have one)
The cover of their #SPFBO entry (from ‘Zon or Goodreads)
An excerpt of their blurb
If I can find ’em I’ll tag ’em!
SPFBO1
Steve Thomas with Klondaeg the Monster Hunter.
“Klondaeg teams up with outlandish adventurers to battle lycanthropic garden gnomes, mummified Elves, a cybernetic bird-man, an acid-drooling wizard, & an army of gold-devouring demons.”
Sounds like a hilarious read!
Steve Muse with Heir of Nostalgia.
“A Gathering Darkness is…about a young prince cast into exile 400 years in the making, a throne empty through treason, & a country silenced by forces unimaginable.”
LONG blurb on GR promising time travel shenanegians.
Steven Roy with Black Redneck vs The Space Zombies.
“The Devourer and her Space-Zombie minions have destroyed untold planets.
Those worlds didn’t have a Black Redneck.”
Apparently it’s zombie/horror/sci-fantasy, so if you’re looking for a #Spooktober read…
Steve S Grant with Conqueror’s Law.
Listed on the original SPFBO1 Phase 1 page as an allocation to Tyson Mauermann of The Speculative Book Review, but no longer available anywhere.
Perhaps it’s been unpublished or re-released under a new title/byline?
Stephanie Caine with Stormshadow.
The pitch on @stephanie_cain’s website says it all: “Self-rescuing princesses, woman pirates, stormwitches…oh, and maybe the end of the world.”
BRB, adding this to my #TBR rn.
@EJStevensAuthor with Burning Bright.
“Things aren’t going well at the offices of Private Eye. Demon problems, pyromaniacal imps, out of control powers attracting the attn of both the Seelie & Unseelie courts.”
YA UF/PNR which is not my thing. Maybe it’s yours?
Anthony Stevens with Shifter Shadows.
“From the dawn of prehistory to an apocalyptic day after tomorrow, shifters and their friends have been in the background of every historical event.”
V. eclectic body of work & impressive creds in psychology per GR. 🤯
Steve Diamond from @ElitistReviews wasn’t an entrant; he was a judge! He’s also the author of Residue:
“Residue follows 17-year-old Jack Bishop after his father is abducted & a monster is let loose in his small town.”
A horror/thriller fantasy for #Spooktober.
The tally so far, in descending order of frequency:
…and I thought 5 in #SPFBO9 was a lot! Anyway. Onwards to #SPFBO2.
SPFBO2
Steve Turnbull with Elona: Patterner’s Path.
“Prophecy says ten-year-old Lady Elona of Faerholme will defeat an invading army…After 6 yrs of political manoevring, Elona’s carefully planned future shatters into a waking nightmare.”
Epic/Sword & Sorcery!
That’s all for #SPFBO2, unless we count Steve Diamond as a judge again. (Nope, no double counting individuals across years!)
“Flame-wielding warriors have been the last line of defense against the nightmare creatures of the World Apart. But their light is fading, & few remain…”
By a kickboxing & karate champ? The fight scenes must ROCK!
Stephan Morse (@FrustratedEgo) with Once Lost Lords.
Paraphrased blurb: Jay, a gang enforcer w/a vamp ex-gf & a troublemaking friend, tries to prove he’s still got his edge by collecting an overdue debt from some elf. Discovers he might not be human?
Looks UF!
Brian D. Anderson & Steven Savile with Akiri: The Scepter of Xarbaal.
“Those who dare test their will against [the Scepter]’s ancient evil are doomed to madness.”
Apparently has dragons?!
BTW @StevenSavile has written for Doctor Who, Stargate, & Warhammer.
R.A. Steffan with The Lion Mistress.
“The gods promised her a savior. The gods are a bunch of lying bastards.”
🤩 dat tagline!
From @RA_Steffan’s bio: families of choice, profound friendships, adventure, danger, good > evil. Lots of sex (mostly non-vanilla).
@stephanie_cain is back with Shades of Circle City.
UF set in Indianapolis, Indiana. Reader described as “a love letter to Indianapolis”.
Last line of the blurb: “Catch the crook, get the guy, & say a few Hail Marys just to be safe.”
Steven Harper Piziks (@StevenPiziks) with Danny.
“Can a teenager use the power of a god?”
Paraphrased ‘Zon review: UF retelling of Ganymede interwoven with the story of Danny, a teen whose single mother moves in with a pornographer.
Blurb has some dark stuff!
Steven Laidlaw (@theRealLaidlaw) with Pulse.
“Since terrorist attacks gave the military power to act on US soil, it’s made life hard for [pickpocket Alexandra Murray].”
@kittygbooks described it on GR as a fast paced spy thriller. YA dystopian by a fellow 🇦🇺!
Cumulative total to #SPFBO3:
5x “Steve” (4 entrants; 1 judge) 5x “Steven” 2x “Stevens” 1x “Stephanie” (2 entries in 2 yrs by same author) 1x “Stephan” 1x “Steffan”
15x total variants
A big increase in the no. of individuals going by “Steven”!
David Joel Stevenson with Victor Boone Will Save Us.
Blurb is GOLD but too long to post. Basically: insecure, overweight Robby Willis uses hunky hulk Victor Boone as his superhero beard but the dude’s been murdered.
BTW @geekoffgrid is also a singer/songwriter!
Steve Thomas returns with something v. diff to his #SPFBO1—The Sangrook Saga, a dark fantasy/horror.
“…warlords, necromancers, demon-worshipers, torturers, & monsters. The Sangrooks ruled half the world before they were defeated, but they were not eradicated.”
Jane Barlow Funk & Steven Boivie with The Pendant Path.
“Two teenagers. Two parallel worlds. Destined never to meet until they stumble upon the secret of the pendant path.”
Looks like a YA portal/urban fantasy!
Steve McKinnon with Symphony of the Wind.
“A bounty hunter with a death wish. A girl with fearsome powers. A kingdom on the brink of destruction.”
@SHRMcKinnon pitches it as: gritty epic fantasy with hardened heroes, thrilling action, dark magic & monsters!
Steve Rodgers with City of Shards.
Author pitches this series as “the story of a childhood left behind, a reconciliation with one terrible mistake from the past, and a quest for love ripped away.”
Has a messenger of the Demon Lord as the protag—pretty cool!
Steven Smith (@dragonsreclaim) with Dragon’s Reclaim.
I’m struggling to parse the blurb. Looks like the world united against dragons, then one kingdom tried to swallow the rest post-victory & story deals with that fallout.
Psst—@Nancy Foster 💉🇲🇽 gave it 4⭐️ on GR!
Stephan Morse (@FrustratedEgo) returns with Continue Online.
“[Grant] dives in headfirst [to an Ultimate Edition of Continue Online, playing as] an NPC deserving of a proper send off. What he discovers…shakes him to his very core.”
Looks like GameLit/LitRPG!
Stephen J. Coey with Scorpion’s Sting.
Paraphrased blurb: A wannabe hero, a jokester axeman, & a farmer on a quest are entangled by a prophecy that says one of them will die.
Free on Smashwords!
(Sorry @StephenCoey for the bar joke pitch; I am bad at this 😅)
21x total variants, several of whom have entered multiple times across multiple years!
SPFBO5
Robin Stephen with Brinlin Isle.
No idea how to summarize the blurb but this has tiny, water dwelling mythical creatures that humans can bond for magical powers.
Robin also writes cowboy horse romances under Stefani Wilder. Does that count for 2x points??
Steven Smith returns with Edgehaven.
It’s a missing person mystery in a seaside town on the west coast of the British Isles, with another 4⭐️ review on GR from @Nancy Foster 💉🇲🇽, who described it as “a [standalone] supernatural thriller”.
Another #Spooktober read!
Steve Turnbull (@adaddinsane) with The Dragons of Esternes.
“What value is freedom when you can’t even ride a dragon?”
Protag is Kantees, a slave responsible for the care of a racing dragon. How’s that for intriguing?
Stephanie Burgis (@stephanieburgis) with Snowspelled.
Blurb summary: first woman magician is snowed in with bickering gent magicians, lady pols, interfering family, & her stubborn ex-fiancé, while an evil elf-lord lurks outside. Oh BTW she’s lost her magic.
Stephan Morse (@FrustratedEgo) returns again with Hound of the Mountain.
“The weight of the world shouldn’t rest on a 17-year-old’s shoulders, but that’s what it feels like for Chase Craig.”
A rescue quest + tournament to join a band of monster hunters!
21x total, plus an hon. mention for one entrant’s alt pen name “Stefani” in another genre
SPFBO6
Stephen Murray with The Longest Shadow.
Blurb summary: the paths of a disgraced general, The Stillborn King, a spy-in-training converge in a succession crisis & a confrontation with ancient terrors.
@Fantasy-Faction’s review says there be gryphons & a giant 🐢!
Steve Thomas returns again with Mid-Lich Crisis.
“An evil wizard has a midlife crisis. Is trying to sacrifice your estranged wife to a bloodthirsty demon an irredeemable act of evil?”
BRB, sending this to an author I know with a WIP titled “Resting Lich Face”.
Anthony Stevens re-entered Shifter Shadows.
…which is, uh, a bit of a surprise. Including this for completeness but not gonna increment the counter.
Stephanie Barr with The Curse of the Jenri.
“Jenri women, every one from the eldest archivist to the smallest babe, strike fear into battle-hardened mercenary hearts.”
Looks like sword & sorcery!
PS: GUYS @Stephanieebarr is a FULL-TIME 🚀 SCIENTIST!!
Stephen James Wright with The Ninth Knight.
Middle-aged knight & 7 companions go on a quest which is hijacked by a mystery 9th knight.
Bio is v. apropos: “@SteveJWright1 uses his full name on his books, but has been described as one of nature’s Steves.” 😂🤣
Steven Smith (@dragonsreclaim) returns with Kingdom of Aces.
According to FB page: “Medieval fast-paced fantasy…Who dies and who rules, their fate is in your hands. Choose Ruby or Ebony.”
Is…is this CYOA fantasy in split novel form? 👀 STEVEN I HAVE Q’s!
Steve Curry with Austin Wyrd.
Magnus is a bouncer at a goth & heavy metal bar who gets caught up in a police investigation of a ritualistic looking murder. He’s also got a psychotic ex-gf with mystical powers & an immortal, vengeful ex-employer.
A Norse UF!
Stephen J. Ethier (@stephenjethier) with The Void Revealed.
From a GR review: “Ancient airships, a crumbling theocracy, and a savage world…Elise, a female Aspirant groomed to save the order, is stranded in an orchestrated accident…”
A sci-fantasy adventure!
Shaun Paul Stevens (@spstevenswriter) with Nether Light.
“A gritty, heart-wrenching tale of high magic and high stakes, loves lost and friendships gained, set in an oil-lit, 18th century world.”
Features a refugee protag and his brother in enemy territory.
This is a strange list lol. Honoured to be in at no. 45…
Delilah Waan
@delilahwaan
It is! 😂 The subject came up randomly today and when I thought about it, I was like, no way, there’s 5 Steves in our cohort, that’s a weird coincidence & then I had to know.
Now I hope somebody (not me) does the same exercise for another name, like maybe “Mark” or “James”.
30x total variants. Look at that jump in the number of people going by “Stephen”!
SPFBO7
Brian D. Anderson & Steven Savile (@StevenSavile) follow up their #SPFBO3 entry with Akiri: Sands of Darkness.
“[Akiri] has turned his back on the gods and their schemes…But the gods will not be so easily ignored.”
🔥 THAT COVER!
Stephanie C. Marks with Stone Magus.
A story about half-elf mage sisters. @LynnsBooks called it a PNR/fantasy romance that focuses on three characters & their relationships with “a very unique twist”.
@SCMarks5 also happens to have THREE degrees in biology. 🤯
Stephen Rice (@writing_steve) with A Handful of Souls.
“Lark has been kidnapped by a spirit worker who can raise the dead. His sisters must travel to rescue him, pursued by a giant with a bleeding grin and guided by a liar.”
Feat. dark humor, violence & whisky!
David Stephenson with Enemy Unknown.
“It took murder for Selvorne to learn his entire life was a necessary lie. One that must continue, if he wishes to live.”
The Amazon page lists David as both author & illustrator so I’m guessing the cover is his art! 👨🏻🎨
33x total variants so far. I’m kind of astounded by how many of you there are!
Stephen Taylor with Candle and Claw.
“Giovel Ullin’s job is to stop witches from crafting experimental magic & destroying the world. It’s a job he never wanted…Packed with hard magic, nuanced characters, & epic conflicts.”
PS: @staylortay is a fellow muso 🎻
Steven Smith returns yet again with Cutthroats and Traitors.
🏴☠️ Pirates on an “alcohol-induced lawbreaking” bender!
Pretty sure @Steven Smith holds the record for “Steven with most #SPFBO entries” at 4 entries! (#SPFBO4, #SPFBO5, #SPFBO6, & SPFBO8.)
Steven Rudy with The Binding Tempest.
“Wheel of Time meets Indiana Jones saga that injects steampunk into High Fantasy.”
@MysticPeddler, please give me book pitching lessons, because yours is awesome.
Shaun Paul Stevens returns with Servant of the Lesser Good.
Feat. a hell-raising virtuoso harpist/socialite whose maid is dead set on stopping her impending marriage to a count.
Also OMG the climax is a harp recital? 🎵
@spstevenswriter I am intrigued.
Stephanie Burgis (@stephanieburgis) returns with Scales and Sensibility.
“A frothy Regency rom-com full of pet dragons and magical misadventures.”
NGL, this is on my #TBR even though Regency romance is really not my thing b/c Austen with 🐉 like come on.
Stephanie Caye (@kittensyay) with The Flaws of Gravity.
“The existence of tequila is at stake.”
That’s as far as I got before I went “OH NO, I MUST KNOW MORE!” (2nd line: “Oh, and humanity too.” B/c Faerie takeover.)
UF is not my thing but tequila totally is.
Steve McHugh (@StevejMchugh) with No Gods, Only Monsters.
“When an old friend arrives looking for help, Diana finds herself thrust back into her old life, and old problems.”
Diana as in the Roman goddess of hunt. Looks like a Roman mythical fantasy!
42x total variants. The Steves win, unless you group “Steven” & “Stevens” together 😂
Disclaimer re: completeness b/c of my ex-auditor brain:
I did not do a full search across the 9 years to see if we had more Steve-judges besides Steve Diamond.
Also didn’t check S initial authors for Stevie-ness.
Am surprised we did not, in fact, have any “Stevies”
Am also shocked we didn’t have any “Stefans” though there was a “Stefani” that I can’t count because that was for a non-fantasy pen name of an #SPFBO entrant.
BTW Steves: is the “Steve” in your byline an abbreviation for a longer name or is it the full name you go by?
Fascinating thread! And thanks for the shout out. Will next year’s #SPFBO be the first populated entirely by Steves? 🤔
A small request to @Mark__Lawrence and the judges: if there is a Steve takeover of #SPFBO10, any chance you can put them all in the same allocation next year? Just for giggles and so us non-Steve authors stand a chance…
First lines, first paragraphs, and first impressions
What I learned while reworking the first chapters of my debut fantasy novel
Written by
Delilah Waan
This article was originally posted as a thread on Twitter on 29 July 2023. As of 2025, I permanently moved over to Bluesky and effective from 17 January 2026, I have deleted all of my Twitter posts due to the changed terms of service.
Some of my most popular threads, such as this one, I have preserved on my website (with minor edits, for accessibility and ease of reading) for posterity.
In July 2023, fellow author and SPFBO9 entrant Steven William Hannah embarked on a first chapter reading challenge: to read the opening chapter (including the prologue where applicable) of all 300 entrants to the contest. His efforts spurred many members of the SPFBO community on Twitter to do the same, encouraging many readers to TBR books they never otherwise would have picked up based on the cover and blurb.
This happened to collide with some other ongoing discourse on #booktwt at the same time.
I had thoughts, which I had summed up at the time in the following reply:
Every sentence I write has one job & one job only: convincing the target reader for my book to read the next sentence.
If I succeed, they’ll read the whole book.
If they don’t, either I’ve made a misstep or they’re not my target reader.
(IMO, that’s the fairer way to put it.)
After sleeping on it for a day, it turned out that I had more to say. I have a soft spot for this thread because never had I ever imagined that one of my favorite authors, Janny Wurts, would see it, let alone quote tweet it:
I hope you’ll find it informative too. Enjoy!
—Delilah.
Following on from the current discourse re: first lines/paras/pages/chapters, I thought I would share a few things that I learned while working on mine.
Learning from songwriters and their lyrics
The best advice on first lines I ever got was in a songwriting workshop with Pat Pattison when he was visiting the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Pat is a Berklee College professor, author of Writing Better Lyrics, and teacher to Grammy award winning songwriters like John Mayer.
In novels (especially fantasy), you have incredible luxury with word count.
Not so in songs.
Pat asked us how quickly we could establish character. A verse? A couplet? A line?
Beth Nielsen Chapman used TWO WORDS in “Child Again”:
Here’s the first verse from “Child Again”: a day in the life sketched in 40 words.
She's wheeled into the hallway Till the sun moves down the floor Little squares of daylight Like a hundred times before She's taken to the garden For the later afternoon Just before her dinner They return her to her room
And those first two words—“She’s wheeled”—do so much heavy lifting in painting a vivid image of who this character is and what they’re doing because of how specific it is.
What I love about the lyrics of “Child Again” is how evocative they are.
We don’t need to be told this is set in a care facility because we can infer that from “wheeled”, “hallway”, and the “sun mov[ing] down the floor” in “little squares of daylight”.
The purpose of the first line and the first chapter
Establishing character & setting as vividly & quickly as possible is my goal for the first line of every scene.
In the prologue to my #SPFBO9 entry, Petition, I went for the basic: POV proper noun, strong verb, & a setting/sensory detail.
But that was not the first line I actually wrote. I didn’t even have a prologue originally; I added one in AFTER alpha and beta reader feedback because I wasn’t hitting the right tone, story, character, and plot promises with Chapter 1.
Petition originally opened right on Chapter 1. Here’s the side by side of the first two paragraphs: alpha draft versus the published version.
Same POV/scene/beat but the published version has more voice. I don’t love the slight clunkiness but never found a fix I liked. I did two rewrites for character and pacing, then trimmed 600 words in line edits & proofing. See the tracked changes of the full chapter from alpha draft to published version & why I made those changes here.
Here’s the side by side of the alpha draft versus the published opening to Chapter 2 of Petition.
Chapter 2 is the end of what I’d consider the opening of Petition.
By then, we’re ~8,000 words in and all the tone, story, character, and plot promises are established. If a reader isn’t hooked by then, they probably won’t be into the rest of the book.
Because I try to construct my openings as a reading experience of the book in miniature. The highs, the lows, the prose style, the themes—everything that might be divisive for readers, I try to fit in there, to signal audience so no one will feel clickbaited.
I don’t always succeed. There’s a subplot that doesn’t emerge until Chapter 9 that’s significant to the main character’s arc. The ending doesn’t land if you don’t buy it. But that’s where I run into problems with genre conventions/expectations.
Making promises and signaling genre expectations
One thing I learned is the term “romance”—as used by readers like me who read fantasy but not romance—has a very specific meaning in book marketing.
Short version: no HEA/HFN? Not romance! Don’t market as one.
So I don’t. I do everything I can to signal it is not a romance. No meet cute. None of the standard romance beats. No mention in the blurb or hint in the cover. But I do worry I will lose non-romance readers for not signaling the subplot upfront as a result.
Still, I hope by the time they’re ~38,500 words in, I’ll have established enough trust with them and delivered on a few payoffs that they’ll keep reading, for the characters and the rest of the plot even if they don’t enjoy that particular subplot.
The ending clearly works for some readers. The whole subplot is clearly cringe for some.
But every review is helpful in figuring out whether or not the book I delivered was the one they expected and if I missed signaling a promise somewhere.
What a reader’s DNF means for authors
Re: DNFs, for those who are just getting started and in Kindle Unlimited (KU)/KDP Select, it’s interesting to look at page reads.
Amazon KDP doesn’t give us anything as good as YouTube retention graphs, but when you only have the odd reader or two, you can see things. 👀
Petition was in KU on launch for 90 days & had a KENPC of 594.
Full reads tended to be 592-593 pages depending on whether they read the back matter. And KU readers tended to binge the book in 1-2 sessions.
Good, because I tried to write a binge worthy book.
But that ending? Right around Kindle location 5528/5721 or 97% of the ebook or on page 409 of the paperback, there is a pivotal moment. A line that made my writing group scream things at me, like: “GODDAMNIT YOU MADE ME FEEL FEELINGS” and “I TRUSTED YOU” and
I don’t know what the corresponding KENPC is for that point in the book. KDP doesn’t tell me that information.
But when I look at this 582 pages read, I can only conclude somebody got to that exact moment and got so pissed they DNF’d 😂
A deep dive masterclass on writing good sentences
I think it shows that just because you’ve hooked a reader, you can’t assume they’ll keep sticking around. You’ve got to keep on winning them over, sentence after sentence, book after book.
The resource I’ve found most insightful in wrestling with the challenge of writing good sentences is Seth Dickinson’s article, Let’s Hurt Sentences:
I’m doing page proofs on THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT, my September debut. It’s a novel about sex, money, imperial power, colonial resistance, accounting, logistics, psychology, and the price of civilization. It’s a story about a young woman fighting to save her home and change the world. It’s made out of sentences.
I like quite a bit of it. Like any writer, I hate some of it. We can talk about the good stuff when the book comes out! Let’s talk about the sentences I’ve discovered I hate, the specific kind of sentence I loathe the most. Let’s figure out why they’re broken.
(Seth Dickinson is a brilliant author; check out his books & short stories if you haven’t already.)
Doing page proofs, I’ve been hitting a class of sentences that bother me a lot. They’re not clunkingly awful, but they leap out at me as missed opportunities. They’re uninhabited sentences: small, functional pieces of narration that don’t seem slanted by a certain character’s perspective. Every sentence should have a mission, and in the prose style I’m using here, every sentence should be a double agent, achieving a surface goal — say, moving a character through a door — and a deeper goal, hinting at emotion, motivation, past, future. Every sentence should have a voice, an owner. Ideally, the reader should know, at least subconsciously, who that owner is.
It’s an eye opening dissection of prose. Look at how Dickinson thinks about what to emphasize versus what to gloss over.
What is the purpose of each sentence? What reaction do you want the reader to have after reading the sentence?
But these sentences I keep meeting are the faceless stormtroopers of prose style. They just sit there connecting interesting things. That’s a waste! Every word should be interesting! Every stormtrooper should get a chance to bang her head on a door or curse creatively.
Let’s grab one. Baru Cormorant watches a woman come into her office.
“Aminata slipped past Muire Lo, who closed the great door with a firm click, and presented herself at attention with a frame of palimpsest tucked under her arm.”
Things Dickinson considers:
What does the sentence reveal about the POV character & the sentence’s subject?
How does it sound when read aloud?
What kind of rhythm & prosody is established with word/punctuation choice, construction, & line breaks?
How could we fix it? We could just radically simplify it. Aminata snapped to attention. We lose Muire Lo, the palimpsest, and a bit of spatial information. But maybe none of that’s important. Aminata can hit her next dialog beat and we can move on with the scene. This is a simple sentence that builds energy, because the reader doesn’t need to spend time figuring it out.
Look at how Dickinson changes EVERYTHING about the way the moment reads just by changing one line of the prose.
How could we play it? Exploring:
Aminata left her papers with Muire Lo and stepped up to salute.
Aminata left Muire Lo to fumble with her papers. Her straight-backed salute made Baru want to apologize for the state of everything, the accounts, the office, the way they’d left matters on Taranoke.
Aminata snapped to attention. Baru liked the salute so much she almost replied in kind. Muire Lo, still fumbling with Aminata’s papers, scurried out of the way.
Aminata smiled slantwise at Muire Lo, who blushed, and slipped past him to salute and set herself at attention. Baru cleared her throat and wished she could look so damn upright.
Aminata came down the length of the office, past Muire Lo and the plotting table and the wine, to snap a perfect salute. Baru remembered her coming down the back hall at school, coming across the dueling floor, and swallowed.
It’s absolutely fascinating how the subtext and emphasis shifts in these different iterations.
Seriously. Read the whole article. (And read Baru.)
Here’s the version Dickinson ended up publishing for that moment.
“Your Excellence.” Aminata came down to the office to salute and set herself at attention. Baru cleared her throat and wished she could look so damn upright. She must have stopped and dusted her uniform, or had a spare brought off the ship. She looked immaculate. The years had kept her taller than Baru, and her duties had kept her graceful and strong, as forthright and ready as a good javelin. There were many reasons Baru had avoided her on Lapetiare.
I personally like the second variant explored the most at the sentence level. But the final version fits the scene and the story best.
Finally AP Canavan has some great breakdowns on writing on YouTube. I’m going to highlight two videos but definitely check out the whole channel.
First, on the importance of authorial intention, audience, and economy in writing:
Second, a brilliant look at a passage by one of the GOATs in epic fantasy, Janny Wurts:
There’s so much going on in this passage. It’s wonderful. If you haven’t tried any Janny Wurts yet, you definitely should!
Conclusion
The output of good writing looks simple but the process of getting there is hard. Sometimes I feel like a character who just did magic. I have no idea how I did what I did or how to (or if I can) do it again.
But writing is a craft and you can get better at it.
The first lines of the beta draft of Supplicant, the sequel to Petition, are not where I’d like them to be.
But there’s still a long way to publication so 🤞 I’ll figure out something better by then. For now, you can check out Petition.
POSTSCRIPT (17 January 2026): Supplicant was published in December 2024. The opening of the prologue remained the same. The first chapter, however, underwent considerable changes, and the opening lines now read as follows:
Rahelu pelted through the Lowdocks.
Though the sun had yet to crest the horizon, the bare stones of the wet market were already slimed with fish guts and seafowl offal (and gods only knew what else) squishing between her toes. A flock of gulls shrilled at her as she tore through their feasting and startled them into flight.
She cursed.
Why were she and Lhorne both such short-sighted, silly, sentimental fools?
Delilah Waan had nothing to add to “magic school” so she wrote “fantasy job interviews” instead.
Petition is her award-winning debut fantasy novel about an angry Asian daughter of impoverished immigrants fighting privileged rich kids in a ruthless job hunt tournament.
![Screenshot of the first lines in the published version of Chapter 2 of Petition by Delilah Waan.
Text reads:
Rahelu and her mother raced the light of the rising sun westward through the terraced streets of Ennuost Yrg. By some miracle of the Starfather, they didn’t slip once on the treacherous stair to the Temple district, and not a soul accosted them along the way to demand tribute.
Even so, they could not catch up to the leading edge of the eartharc rays sweeping across the city. By the time they staggered into Market Square on shaky legs, breath rasping in their lungs, the Isonn live fish haulers had already come and gone. They’d put the leaky barrel with her father’s latest catch in a cursed inconvenient spot—between the southern entry to the pavilion and the [excerpt ends here]](https://www.delilahwaan.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/firstlines_petition_ch2_published-606x1024.jpg)
![Screenshot of Goodreads review. Text reads:
Her relationship with Lhorne was *chef's kiss* - I'm mostly a fantasy and romance reader and I understand that romance is probably not this book's primary genre, BUT the utter longing in the last scene they shared? [REDACTED] I'm going to need ten working days to recover 😭 [REDACTED] I just really loved this particular subplot okay?](https://www.delilahwaan.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/firstlines_petition_review1-865x1024.jpg)
![Screenshot from the beta draft of the prologue for Supplicant by Delilah Waan.
Text reads:
Prologue: Toll
The 3rd day of truesummer, 530 A.E./A.F.
Uvesht-mo faltered in the midst of his deepnight prayers.
The stars were ringing.
A chime, a gong, whose round tones were so deep they could not be heard, could not be perceived, except as a thrumming in his bones that shook the very substance of his being until his heart felt like it would burst. Lit sticks of incense fell from his limp fingers to land on the cave floor, their scent smothered by the flurry of damp sand kicked up in his wake.
Outside the sea cave, Uvesht-m
the Starfather's gaze and wept. Tears of joy and [excerpt ends here]](https://www.delilahwaan.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/firstlines_supplicant_beta_prologue-600x1024.jpg)
![Screenshot from the beta draft of the first chapter for Supplicant by Delilah Waan.
Text reads:
Chapter 1: Departure
The 10th day of truesummer, 530 A.E./A.F.
Rahelu leaned on the Winged Arrow's taffrail, watching the shadowed city of Ennuost Yrg shrink from view. They passed by the Isonn fishing fleet as they sailed eastward into the rising sun. At this distance, the individual boats scattered across the calm waters on the south side of the Kuath bay were as minuscule as grains of rice.
Still, she scanned each one: straining her eyes to try and pick out the patched gray sail and plodding lines of her parents' sloop from its fellows. A swift, sharp motion in the eartharc light drew her gaze to one of the smaller vessels with two figures aboard. She [excerpt ends here]](https://www.delilahwaan.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/firstlines_supplicant_beta_ch1-600x1024.jpg)