complexity approach

hello friends! fyi i have been drowning in midterms. and the horrors. so i might aim for shorter missives in the future instead of only doing this every 4–5 months (ﾟ∀ﾟ;)

anyway. today i want to talk about something i learned about in my phonology class called the complexity approach, which is basically one way to help people (often kids) who have trouble pronouncing certain speech sounds. it’s also sort of writing-related (?)

first, some background:

1. consonants are produced in different ways. stops (e.g., p, b, t, k) involve a hard obstruction somewhere in the articulatory apparatus; fricatives (f, s, z, ‘sh’) have a continuous hissy sound; affricates are a combination of stops and fricatives (the ‘ch’ sound = t + ‘sh’) but count as one sound in phonology-world; nasals (m, n, ‘ng’) are the ones you have a hard time producing if you pinch your nose or have a cold.

2. kids generally start saying some of these consonants earlier than others, i.e., you’ll hear many infants babbling ‘bababa’ (stop) and ‘mamamama’ (nasal) but not usually ‘chachacha’ 💃🏻 (affricate). so typically earlier-developing sounds are considered ‘simpler’ with regards to motor movements of the tongue / lips etc.

3. consonants are also organized into a hierarchy of implicational relationships, which sounds like it could be an ao3 tag (if you’re my clinical phonology professor and reading this, no you’re not). anyway, the idea is that a language containing affricate sounds will also (‘by implication’) have fricatives, and a language that contains fricatives will also have stops. also, if a language allows words to have three consonants clustered together (e.g., in english, str-, scr-, spl-, etc.), it will also allow two-consonant clusters (fl-, sn-, etc.). a sort of one-way ladder. (fun fact: polish allows five-consonant clusters!)

4. the higher on the hierarchy a sound is, the more ‘complex’ it’s considered.

a helpful diagram adapted from lecture slides, with thanks to prof. c:

there’s some debate around how to teach these speech sounds. traditionally, slps will target ones that are just slightly more complex than the individual can manage—for example, if someone can produce ’s’ when prompted but not ‘ch’ or ‘str-‘ or ’skw-’ at all, the slp will teach s first and move gradually up the complexity ladder. there’s still a place and time for this approach; however, some recent research is finding that starting at the top of the ladder actually leads to more improvement faster—that in many cases, teaching clusters, for example, will cause other, less complex sounds to ‘come in’ (like teeth(?)) without direct intervention. which i find fascinating. the idea is that exposure to complexity gives kids more information about the language system overall.*

a connective intuition: the (suzuki (lol)) music school of my childhood stages an annual performance in which the most advanced kids play first, lining up at the back of the stage, and then the slightly less advanced kids file in in front of them for the next piece, and so on—the students conveniently decreasing in average height with each row—until everyone’s playing twinkle twinkle little star with the tinies in front. and it isn’t strictly a complexity approach—no one’s playing bach double before lightly row—but learning the difficult pieces is how you get good at the simple ones. not mastering every nuance the first time something is presented to you, but playing it again four years later and bringing that much more musicality and muscle memory.

in writing, i feel like there are many different possible ladders, even if they overlap in places—worldbuilding (which might be further broken down into immersiveness, extrapolation of existing systems, coolness of concept, novelty, etc.), character development, plot / tension, dialogue, scenecraft, line-level prose, etc. also, not everyone’s ladders are the same length; they may not even point in the same direction (see craft in the real world by matthew salesses and ‘we are the mountain: a look at the inactive protagonist’ by vida cruz). and i think most authors would tell you that novel-writing proficiency, if such a thing even exists, doesn’t automatically translate to short story prowess.

but i remember sharing a very early** draft of these deathless shores with someone in a position of authority over my work at the time and being told, “make sure you’re not doing too much.” and were they right? probably. is this also true of the finished book? i’m sure a number of the reviews i haven’t read (for real this time) would say so. but maybe i needed to do too much, first. maybe i needed to fill my fists with plot threads before learning how to balance a few; to write a whole near-future-ish world and a bunch of unnecessary secondary characters and a 40,000-word museum heist before i could narrow down to the story i wanted to tell.

since then, i think (hope) i’ve climbed a couple rungs up the ladder of identifying when an idea belongs to a different book, i’m drafting in the wrong direction, i need to trash the first 10k and start at a hornier point in the story, etc. and i think noveling with four (technically five?) povs has made juggling the two in my current work a lot easier. but also, now, i’m working on a sequel for a novel that hasn’t sold yet. i’m complicating a happy ending and attempting international politics™, which for the past couple years, in the midst of second book syndrome / burnout / generalized publishing angst, i couldn’t see myself writing at all. the risk i’m taking is calculated, and my mathematical ability is doubtful. but i want to know that i can finish a sequel. i want to hold a story and a world for 200,000+ words instead of 108,000. also writing these characters is like crack to me and i get dopaminitos from putting them through the meat grinder. but on the whole: i’ve been playing with longer plot threads, and feelings about disability & caretaking & debt & representation & diaspora that i didn’t get to explore as much in book 1, and building more countries and cultures (whereas book 1 mostly takes place in one city), and it’s a great time and i need some studying procrastination outlet that isn’t the dumpster fire of social media. so i’m perseverating on my classical music yaoi nonsense ¡as a treat! 💃🏻 & maybe the real publishing experience is the teeth you grow along the way.

news:

• these bodies ain’t broken ed. madeline dyer, a ya horror antho featuring disabled authors & protagonists, is out now! contains my first ever novelette, ‘the ruins you’ve made,’ about literally hostile architecture, an institutional curse, chronic pain, & capitalism (you know, the usual).

• my essay ‘missing mythologies: on westernization in diasporic storytelling’ (originally intended to be a these deathless shores promo essay ope) was published by ruadán books in july!

• in a similar vein, my essay ‘old enough to become the villain: contemporary narratives around growing up’ is coming out on monday from strange horizons!

• my first fabulist short story, ‘home/body,’ will be published in uncanny, probably sometime in 2026! i’ve been submitting to them since around the time i started querying these deathless shores ahah

• some v cool short story news for 2027 i’ll hopefully be able to announce soon ~

reading

• mad sisters of esi by tashan mehta: truly the fantasy novel of all time. up there with time war for me. the spear cuts through water pov shenanigans x spacetime things of piranesi x the sheer creativity of italo calvino

• heart check by emily charlotte: full disclosure i’m a pretty hard sell for ya romance these days, but emily knocks it out of the park. a+ character arcs & just so full of heart & also the pining. just came out nov 18, get it at your local bookstore now ~

• indeterminate inflorescence by lee seong-bok—poetry advice that is also poetry that is also insp no matter what form your writing takes

• shake out the ghosts by al hess—oh this one gave me the gender feelings. & also just tenderness feelings. how do you mourn the loss of your old selves, how do you love the person you’ve become. out in march but yelling about it now cos im a smug mf & preorders are great

• those beyond the wall by micaiah johnson—have i yelled about this already? holy shit what a masterclass in sequel & r e v e a l s & fucken angst generally. also the first fight scene that made me cry

• unfinished business by clare osongco—haunted corporate slack server! diaspora vs. capitalism feelings! a small yacht!! temu jacob elordi

• some excellent stuff i can’t talk about yet aaaaa

pods

• fashion neurosis with ocean vuong / bella freud—was taking all the notes on this one. especially liked the bits about salvage, glamour, and the gendered origins of ‘purple’ / ‘flowery’ prose as derogatory

• normal gossip—larp camp with rebecca jennings—someone said this ep was me-coded, one of the best compliments of my life

• ‘the psychology of writing bestsellers’ and ‘the psychology of fandom’ with jennifer lynn barnes, on grammar girl

music

• kpop demon hunters + ejae’s ‘in another world’

• florence + the machine (‘everybody scream’ and ‘one of the greats’ is lowkey book 1 wip coded)

• ‘good girls’—josie edwards

• dodie’s ‘i’m fine!’ / ‘smart girl’ / ‘hold fire’

thanks for reading!! have a vintage (2018) christmas spotacus:

* for more info, see storkel, h. l. (2018). the complexity approach to phonological treatment: how to select treatment targets. language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(3), 463-481.

** i.e., at the point where it was still sorta cyberpunk and there was some kind of behavior-altering spore pandemic situation (??) honestly i had zero memory of this until i looked it up just now