Professional Critique for BIRD OF PARADISE by Fiona N. Manning


Congratulations on making the top five submissions this month and for being such a regular contributor to YouWriteOn.Com – it’s great to see such dedicated ambition to keep improving and honing the creative writing process. I hope this critique will help you develop that even further.

As a break from my usual format, I’d like to begin at the end and give my general comments now, and break it down from there. As I’m sure you are aware, the short story market is a very tricky one. It’s a genre that is loved by many, but unfortunately it doesn’t sell (apart from those by very well known writers) and so it’s not an area publishers are looking to invest in or expand. There are only very few lists out there that do publish short story collections. And even the fickle and fast dwindling literary magazine scene is no longer such a reliable way of getting short stories published and seen. So, basically, to get the commercial viability of your work out the way before the fun stuff…it’s not the best area to choose if you are wanting to get your writing noticed/published/etc. It is however, a great way to practice.

Historical fiction, on the other hand, is a very healthy and burgeoning market, if you think about the success and following of the likes of Tracy Chevalier, Philippa Gregory and Sarah Dunant.

Plot and structure:

You have found an absolutely fascinating subject in Queen Lili’uokalani. It’s a slice of history that I, shamefully, was unaware of, and one which I am now intrigued by – especially, as you say in your synopsis, due to the many parallels you can draw with modern history, although I would probably avoid getting too bogged down by current affairs and politics when analysing your motivation to write this story. Anyway, it led me to look up more information on her and this period of Hawaiian history, and the main thrust of my critique is this: why don’t you write a full length historical novel centred around this woman and her story? A cursory glance at Amazon et al shows there are quite a few biographies that already exist about your queen, but it is not immediately obvious that any fiction has been written around her. I’ll discuss this further in the Character and Voice section.


Structure wise – as I’ve suggested, I don’t believe this is quite the format for your story. The fact that you rely quite heavily on the information you impart in your synopsis, which is actually more of a preamble than a breakdown of what happens, shows that your short story doesn’t necessarily speak for itself. If I had read your short story without knowing any of the background, I think I would have been slightly confused about what I was reading. Which brings me on to the plot.

Taken by itself, Bird of Paradise feels more like a prologue to a bigger story, than a story in itself. Admittedly, it’s hard to cram a convoluted plot into a two and a half thousand word short story, but there isn’t enough of a narrative here. There needs to be more of a story arc, which draws you in, jiggles you around and then spits you out again - satisfied, or at least with a sense of closure. I didn’t feel that sense of closure here… in fact, it feels like the story is just about to get going at the start of the tribunal. All this to say, in a positive way, that I feel there is much bigger scale, epic story waiting to burst out of this short story.

Character and voice:

Your idea of writing this short story from the point of view and in the voice of the queen’s personal maid is a very good one, and therein lies the fiction angle. It can often be tricky to embellish a well-documented event or person convincingly and with confidence, but I would suggest making the most of the maid’s obscurity and the fact that she’s been erased by history… this is where you can really let your imagination fly away with you. You say you want to keep her anonymous, avoiding physical description, but I would strongly urge the opposite. Your maid is the vehicle through which you are telling the story of the queen and her plight, the keyhole through which you draw your reader into the world of Hawaii at the end of the 19th century, so she needs to be fully dimensional, fully clothed, fully fleshed. In short, someone your reader can sympathise and identify with across the oceans and centuries.

The queen herself likewise could benefit from a more fulsome and vivid description – apart from her fear and composure, I didn’t quite grasp a full picture of her.

Writing style:

You have a good, strong opening to your story, one which convincingly sucks in the reader as forcefully as the chanting wakes up the dreaming queen. But then it isn’t entirely clear what is happening to them. I think quite a lot is assumed of the reader’s knowledge of the historical facts. For instance, the guard pushes into the house to read out her list of charges and as far as I can tell, the queen is still just waking up. Then on page 2, they are suddenly outside in the gardens and the queen is falling, and then suddenly she is in a carriage. There are lots of gaps. How did they get to be outside? And where are they at the beginning if not in her ‘old home’ they stop outside or her ‘official home’ they seem to be approaching on page 2? There is perhaps a bit too much description and conjecture on the narrator’s part. In order to get the story going more, to get the narrative flowing, there needs to be more linear action, more detail, so we can visualise it effortlessly and be there with them in the heat and the chaos and despair. The maid’s musings slow it down and detract from the central action. In other words, there is a bit too much ‘telling’ not ‘showing’. For instance, on page 3: ‘My mind could not accept what my eyes were seeing.’ Why not? How did she feel? Make us be there in her head experiencing the same fears and horrors. There are more instances which I will flag in the line-edit section.

Specific line-editing points:

Page 1 para 4 up: ‘They took her to her uncertain fate’ who? ‘My queen’?

Page 1 para 3 up Who is she praying to? And what does she mean by ‘why had her husband died and left her here?’ Suggest expanding on this. What happened to her husband?


Page 2 para 4: Suddenly lapses into the present tense. See also page 4 para 11 up.

Page 2 para 6 up: ‘Do not forget me’ – this implies they are saying goodbye, but then the maid follows her and is with her thereafter.

Page 3 para 4 Who is the David mentioned here?

Page 4 Why has the Reverend been screaming about her for more than seven years? More background detail is needed here.

Page 5 para 6 What is the significance of the actions of her adopted sons here?

Final Analysis: I think you have the basis for a really wonderful historical novel here. I appreciate that you probably weren’t looking for that kind of advice from this critique but I hope this may inspire you to try something a little bigger with your craft. Of course, it completely depends on what you are planning to achieve with your writing, but with some work, I think there is real potential. I wish you lots of luck with it. Thank you for a very enjoyable read and for introducing Queen Lili’uokalani and her fascinating story to me. Merry Christmas!