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Telling details advance our understanding of a character. Watch for these road signs. They often signal the trouble ahead.

“And Not As a Stranger,” by Lucy Warner, Image, Number 76

This is the first of two stories in Image about women who have suffered sexual abuse. The details give us a clue about why women don’t voice outrage.

Why, why? She wept to herself, her docility a kind of terror which immobilized her and froze the blood in her veins, paralyzed her limbs.

• “Jesus Called,” by Michael Morris, Image, Number 76

…I wondered what the Indian writer would say about the condition of my soul. I pictured it as a deformed shape, like a worn-out sponge with its parts weathered and torn away.

If the abuser is capable of committing the act, he is accountable no matter what the circumstances. At the end of this story, the woman finds her voice, and it is loud. 

• “The Prospects,” by Michelle Seaton, One Story, Issue Number 180

Whoo boy, Seaton exposes the underbelly of college football recruiting, where “players who lack entirely the genetic urge for self-preservation” are revered.

• “Madame Bovary’s Greyhound,” by Karen Rusell, Zoetrope:All-Story, Summer 2013

I suppose this would be classified as Fan Fiction, a story that expands on a character already established in literature by another author. This story is voiced by Madame Bovary’s puppy, discarded with the same disregard with which the lady discarded her husband. Russell details the soul of a neglected animal who is “unable to cure her need for a human.”

• “Skin,” The Theory of Light and Matter, by Andrew Porter

Chloe’s moist hands and mussed hair are telling details about her state of mind as she confesses something shattering to her husband. The reader is left to guess what she told him, but we are given clues to ponder.

• “Sunday: A Song Cycle,” by Kate Petersen, Crazyhorse Number 83 Spring 2012

The writer creates her own liturgical introit to examine her relationships. Connections elude her. A telling sentence:

…he is one of two people who told me they loved me, though that’s not this same day, but later, the words arriving safe and awayed in a letter.”

• “The Theory of Light and Matter,” short story in the book by the same name by Andrew Porter

Realizations are telling. Heather partitions her life, acknowledging that she loves her husband-to-be “as much as she could love any man.” In reserving parts of herself for someone else, she discovers that “the only truth lies in the secrets we keep from each other.”