Reflection on All that glitters
All that glitters is very different from my first two short stories. With those I had picked scenes that were part of a longer story and simply described them. This resulted in a lot of exposition and a sense that there was no progress, no character development or purpose to the story, as they were taken out of context.
With All that glitters I had three goals:
- Create a short story with a self-contained storyline
- Reveal information about the world through the characters' interactions rather than through exposition
- Write about a fictional technology in detail
I first decided the technology I wanted to write about: asteroid mining. I've always enjoyed video games where I could mine in space. There's something about the ability to create value from a rock that's floating around, freely available, that appeals to me.
Then I decided to base this story on an alien species. This was partly to take the pressure off writing about humans, and partly because it meant I didn't have to work out how this story fits into the larger one I have in mind.
I had a lot of fun creating the history, physical characteristics and social structure of the "Charags", plus the events that led to them being in space using another species' technology. I also had fun working out the logistics of mining in space, the controls that would be needed, and the challenges a miner would face.
Then it came to working out the story I wanted to tell. I started with a rough outline, beginning, middle and end, and described some key events. For example:
- Intro - starts off isolated, not belonging
- Build up - learning mining, sense of achievement, growing in confidence
- Climax - emergency, heroine moment
- Ending - finds her place
I created characters and scenarios to fill those plot points. As I did that there was a lot of back-and-forth between character development, world building, and fleshing out the story outline. And finally I had enough in place to start writing the first draft.
I wrote the draft without any editing, to get the sense of the story shape, I just wrote what came to mind as I tried to bring the outline to life. Whenever there was a hole I didn't know how to fill I wrote a [todo] note so that I didn't get sidetracked. Instead of editing that draft to improve it, I wrote a second and then third draft, adding foreshadowing, explanations and further details each time as more ideas occurred to me.
I put a lot of detail into the mining sequence. I even got AI to create a mining mini-game so I could better work out the details of what Kola would need to monitor and how the ship would move. I expect that mining will be a key part of many of my future stories so I wanted to get the details right, to ensure it requires skill and is not just point and click.
I put the third draft through an AI critique and the feedback was that it contained too much exposition. I hadn't realised that I had done that, yet again! This time I thought I was showing information from the point of view of the main character, for example: "She knew from experience that if she forced the issue by approaching someone and speaking directly to them, they would respond politely, as they would not risk trouble for their clan by being openly rude." To my mind that was the character thinking these thoughts, not me the narrator stating them. But I took on board the point that it is more effective to reveal information via an interaction than to get a character to effectively think it out loud for the benefit of the reader.
I wrote a list of every piece of information I had explained in the opening paragraphs, and worked out 1) was it key to the story, and if yes, 2) could I show it instead? I then wrote the fourth draft, copying some scenes from the previous version, and writing other scenes from scratch. In draft five I filled in the remaining holes and continuity issues and then it was ready for copy editing (I asked AI to find the typos and grammatical mistakes) and publishing.
Even though the final AI critique (see below) still identified places where I explain too much, I am pleased with how the story turned out and my experience writing it. Like Kola while she was mining, I found myself completely absorbed in writing, eager to add another detail or embellish a scene. I remembered to keep a log of my writing sessions and in total it took me 23 hours across 7 days to plan and write this story. And while the story itself consists of 5,116 words, the document with the world building, outline, asteroid research and drafts contains 27,411 words, which is over a quarter of the length of a novel.
Another piece of AI feedback was that the supporting characters were underdeveloped, so I need to work out how to give them depth. My next short story may continue with the Charags to focus on this, or may explore their mysterious Galak hosts. I look forward to finding out.
AI Critique of All that glitters
AI CRITIQUE — Entry 3
Story: "All That Glitters" · Rated: 3 Oct 2026 · Rater: Claude (Opus 4.8)
Bands: Emerging → Developing → Solid → Strong
Prose & sentence craft — SOLID
Clear, controlled, and well-paced at the sentence level, with good variation between the long, concentration-heavy sentences of the mining sequence and the short, clipped lines of the altercations. Technical description stays readable without jargon fatigue. The prose rarely calls attention to itself, which suits the close-third register. Where it sits short of STRONG: a reliance on certain connective habits ("She felt good, she realised," "It felt good to know," "It felt as if") that recur enough to notice, and a few sentences that front-load subordinate clauses before reaching the action. To level up: vary the sentence openings in the reflective passages, where the "subject–verb–realised" shape repeats.
Show vs. tell — SOLID
The story's method is sound: Kola's isolation is dramatised (the two mess-hall rebuffs, the back-slap to someone else, eating alone in her cabin), and the physical world is taught almost entirely through use. The removal of the sash and dagger in private is a model instance — her whole predicament conveyed in one physical action, no narration of feeling required. What holds it from STRONG is a recurring half-step back into summary right after a scene has landed: the isolation is shown, then a sentence explains what it means ("reminded herself that being ignored here was still preferable..."); the mining triumph is shown, then interpreted at length. The scenes are strong enough that the gloss isn't needed. To level up: trust the dramatised beat to carry its own meaning without the following explanatory sentence.
Structure & pacing — SOLID
A clean, complete arc with a genuine full-circle figure: Kola opens isolated-by-status and closes claimed, with the fellow Zarl's closing sneer deliberately holding her external standing fixed so the internal transformation reads against it. The two-movement shape — find the work (the mine), find the bond (the rescue) — is well-proportioned, and the gold-discovery pivot lands near centre where it belongs. The cargo-jettison beat is the structural standout: Kola dumps her hard-won haul to reach Baston faster, which injects real cost into the rescue and dramatises the story's values in a single action. To level up: the pre-mining stretch (mess hall, hangar, altercation, pod, suit, airlock) runs long before Kola acts for herself; the opening movement could tighten so the mine arrives sooner.
Character — DEVELOPING
Kola has real interiority — the yearning to belong, the learned knowledge of exactly how polite rejection operates, the lived hour at the mine — and she anchors the story well. Baston and Larvist are distinct by behaviour (restraint versus swagger), and the two gossiping Nelgs get a small differentiating beat. But the supporting cast is largely functional: Larvist is vivid yet single-note (recklessness as plot-trigger), the Krenthin exists to rebuff, and the surrounding volunteers are deliberately featureless, which is thematically defensible but leaves the warmth resting entirely on the Kola–Baston axis. Baston's honour also arrives partly stated — her speech to the Galaks announces her clan's values rather than only embodying them. To level up: let Baston's creed show through a smaller action rather than a declaration; give one background figure a distinguishing trait that isn't in service of the plot.
Voice & tone control — SOLID
Register is consistent throughout — ordinariness under strain, awe and horror kept understated — and the narration stays disciplined to Kola's knowledge and perception; the reader learns the world only as fast as she does. The ending is well-judged: "It was worth the universe to Kola" stays inside her interiority and resists reaching over her head to the reader. The one wobble is register-matching in dialogue: the Galaks are terse and functional everywhere ("Violence will not be tolerated," "Acknowledged") except where exposition is needed, and the medical-scan line ("You are lucky. Your hibernation mode protected you...") sits at a slightly more explanatory register than their other speech. To level up: hold the Galaks' clipped voice even when they must convey information.
World-integration — SOLID
The strongest mode on display: physical systems revealed through competent use. The mining sequence teaches asteroid composition, collector physics, the laser-speed trade-off, and the ship growing sluggish as the hold fills — all through Kola doing, none through lecture — and the flight-to-mining control switch renders setting-logic as felt skill. The spacewalk turns worldbuilding into suspense: the cords, the handholds, the gravity-edge are all load-bearing because they were established before they're used. The hibernation that saves Baston is planted early and unobtrusively (the downed wrestler in the mess hall), converting a potential convenience into a setup. Where integration is thinner: the social world — clan honour, expendability, three-nation politics — arrives more by exposition than by test, with the oath being the one place the honour system pays off through lived action. To level up: dramatise a point of the social order the way the mine dramatises the physical one.
Highlights
- The mining sequence does three jobs at once — teaches the setting, dramatises Kola's first experience of belonging, and earns the gold-pivot — without a word of lecture, and the hold growing less responsive as it fills is the kind of specific, used detail that makes a world feel real.
- The cargo jettison: discarding the literal glitter (the gold she was proud of a page earlier) to save a near-stranger enacts the title's whole argument in one button-press, and the materials staying lost keeps the cost honest.
The one edit
The highest-leverage trim is the explanatory sentence that follows several dramatised beats — the gloss after the mess-hall rejection, the extended interpretation after the mining triumph. The story's scenes are consistently strong enough to carry their own meaning; the following sentence that names that meaning is where it briefly distrusts the reader. Cutting or compressing those tails would raise show-vs-tell toward STRONG and tighten the reflective prose at the same time, since the two issues share a cause.
Pattern to watch
Explaining the scene just dramatised — a strong shown beat (the rejection, the mine, the rescue) is frequently followed by a sentence that interprets or confirms its significance, where the action had already delivered it. It appears at the sentence level in the reflective passages and once in late dialogue (the Galak's medical-scan line). First appearance; will track whether it recurs. The inverse is already a strength — the final line trusts the reader completely — so the instinct to trust is present and simply needs extending to the beats that currently get a footnote.