Chapter 1- Low Physical Threat?

Arrowyn

“It still chills my spine, they are just kids. Malignant, twisted kids who we must warn you about. They call themselves the Black Lyps, the ‘y’ replacing the ‘i’ in lips due to the shared letter in their names. The names that haunt my nightmares, the names that I must speak today, my good citizens to warn you of their crimes and the threat they pose.”

            He took a deep breath; this wasn’t something he thought he’d ever had to do. Warn the public about four teenager serial killers.

“In case you are not aware, the Black Lyps are responsible for the deaths of, so far, 247 people in a matter of five months, they aren’t claiming to be part of any larger terrorist group and have refused to release any sort of statement or express what it is they are murdering for. The authorities have released pictures which I will show you now for your own safety.”

The Prime Minister-Daniel Sanderson- trembled slightly as he reached for the button on the slideshow. The people before him shuddered as he pressed down; a coloured photograph of five young teenagers came up, all smiling into the camera innocently. This was taken a few months ago, only two days before the first murder took place, three boys and two girls each with black painted lips.

The PM clicked again. One of the girls from the previous picture came up; unlike the rest of them, she had a rather plain face and features: plump cheeks, light brown eyes, bow shaped lips. It was these features that made her dangerous.

“Kyra Jade, she’ll be 15 in two weeks, though she may look like any other girl, Kyra uses her plain features to her advantage by blending in, it is almost impossible to find her especially in a crowd. She uses makeup and prosthetics to alter her appearance almost every day, the only giveaway is the signature black lipstick each of them wears. Her position in the group seems to be the Stalker, stalking the group’s victim and buying most of their stuff. Her mother once said that Kyra had once followed her all the way to Scotland at the age of 7-years-old without her even knowing, making not a single sound. Though the authorities have her written as a Low Physical threat, seeing her anywhere, means the rest if the Black Lyps are close and it is still a severe cause for concern. ”

            Sanderson cracked his knuckles, suddenly aware of the building rings of sweat under his armpits and the tightness of his shirt. The next picture held a boy almost completely opposite to the girl from before. He had black hair so dark it almost looked blue, grey eyes that twinkled in the light and sharp cheekbones. There was a daring wolf whistle from someone in the crowd that helped to ease the tension slightly. But it was that same wolf whistle that he thrived on.

“Lynx Eastwood, Some of you may recognise the name as the ‘Cutest Boy in the World’ from a few years ago; well his crimes are far from cute. Now the authorities are confident that he too is a Low Physical Threat, however, Lynx uses our own human instincts against us, preying on the sexually tense and exploiting our own weaknesses against us. We warn you all, especially our younger generation, to be careful about whom you are meeting and to always tell someone where you are. We have no way of gauging  his intelligence levels  as all his recent school teachers claim he seduced them into false grades, we are still investigating this. Although he is a part of the Black Lyps, none of their victims have been raped, shown any signs of sexual trauma or are under the age of 16, the police are calling him the Seducer.”

            He was being vaguer, realising how little anybody actually knew about them. Besides a few blurry photographs that the Black Lyps themselves had posted online, months before the crimes, there was nothing. They were smart, but the smartest was on the next slide. Tan skin, brown hair, piercing blue eyes and glasses that he’d made himself; nobody knew what they were for, or what they did only that he was always seen with them and upon the inspection of his bedroom, they found coded plans.

“Trystan Grady, his IQ is estimated to be over 220 having learnt the first million decimals of pi at the age of 5 and solving a 17x17 Rubix Cube at the age of 3, he’s a high threat. He’s the elder of the Grady twins, he’s irrational and completely unpredictable and the World’s 3^rd most dangerous person, he has managed to evade our most advanced technology, if it weren’t for his crimes, Trystan would have had a promising future but now he’s a Black Lyp, he’s the Analyst. We are still optimistic that he will be found along with the rest of them.”

            His last sentence came off hollow. Nobody had any trust in the authorities, not when they’d let 247 of their citizens die at the hands of five teenagers. He clicked again to Trystan’s non-identical twin brother, it was a medical mystery to begin with, they were technically born conjoined at wrist yet Wynter Brady had dark brown eyes and blonde hair, the contrast in his hair and eyes was not only striking but slightly scary.

“Wynter Grady is suspected of convincing his Year 2 teacher to kill herself and then his Year 5 teacher to kill his wife. The Manipulator, possibly even more dangerous than his brother, he is supposedly the leader of the group, and orchestrated the entire ordeal. He’s also fast, with a top speed of apparently 37.8 miles per hour, we have a video of him walking into a police station and then legging it. He is a low physical threat however, high mental threat.”

            It was supposed to make people feel at ease as they saw the video, that they had some sort of evidence. But it was just more terrifying as if these kids weren’t even human.  There was only one Black Lyp left, the most dangerous person in the world; Sanderson ran a hand through his sweaty hair as he pushed down for the next slide. Most of the people in the crowd started crying when they saw the last person their loved ones would have laid eyes upon.

“Arrowyn Holland-Harper.” Sanderson snarled.

            He clenched his fists and out of nowhere, he threw the remote at the screen in rage. His own brother had been killed amidst the chaos of the Black Lyps; he was beyond slideshows and sharp suits.

“That’s enough! I don’t care what it takes, I want these monsters caught and killed, I’m the Prime Minister of England and I’ll damn well change the law if I have to.

            The camera cut.

            Wynter burst into hysterical laughter and it wasn’t long before we too were bent over nearly dying from the humour. It wasn’t that the situation we were in that was particularly funny, it was how messed-up the information they had was, or lack of information. Firstly, the twins’ last name was Brady not Grady; I don’t know how they manage to mess that one up. Second, Wynter could not run at 37.8 miles an hour, maybe 24 at a stretch. Also, in what world was Lynx a teacher seducer? He was 14 and two months when we started this, and it was only then that he started the whole seducing thing.

“Guys, I’m a low physical threat.” Lynx giggled nearly spilling his lemonade everywhere.

“I’m the leader guys.” Wyn said flexing his biceps before laughing harder as I pretended to be offended.

            We calmed down a little but it didn’t last long.

“I’m unpredictable and irrational.” Trystan added setting us all off again.

            It was ironic; the most dangerous kids in the world sitting around a table in a restaurant laughing like any other teenagers. Nobody could tell it was us, stupid people, nobody ever assumed it would be them to die, nobody ever assumed that maybe just maybe the boy who looked like the murderer on TV was the same one sitting a mere two metres away.

            Lynx stopped giggling uncontrollably, not that he would ever admit it in front of the others, but this whole thing still scared him. Not the killing part, or the idea that we might get caught; it was the thought that we’d be separated. That scared all of us to be fair, Wyn and Trystan claimed they had a plan for that, but not everything always went to plan.

Author's Note

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[JayG]

You’re working hard and putting a lot of yourself into your stories, emotionally. And based on your bio comments you want to please the reader, while at the same time, the act of writing gives your imagination wings—and provides a kind of satisfaction that life sometimes doesn’t.

So…you have the enthusiasm, the desire, the imagination, and everything you need but one thing. And at the same time, a misunderstanding we all share when we leave our school years places you into the situation Mark Twain described with, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

But...since you cannot use the tool you don’t know exists, or fix what you don’t see as being a problem…

Think about your school years. In more than a decade of primary schooling did even a single teacher explain why a scene on the page ends in disaster for the protagonist, and why it should? Did any of them explain the elements of a scene on the page, explain why they differ from one on the screen, and what they do toward drawing the reader in and keeping them turning pages? Because if they didn’t, how can you write a scene? You didn’t learn those things by reading, because reading fiction no more teaches us to write it than does eating teach us to cook, or visiting a museum teache us how and when to put two colors on the same brush.

Did even one teacher spend a minute on why we cannot transcribe ourselves telling a story aloud, as you do here? Obviously not. So while it’s not your fault that you’re doing that, and other things like it, and it’s not a matter of how well you write or talent, it’s something you need to fix—something related to that misunderstanding I mentioned.

Simply put, Because no one reminds us that professional knowledge is acquired IN ADDITION to our schooldays skills we assume that the word “writing” in the profession called Fiction-Writing refers to the writing techniques we’re given in our school days. But it doesn't.

Through your school years you were assigned an endless succession of reports and essays to write, but damn few stories. Your teachers spent no time on making dialog live for the reader, tag usage, the role and necessity of the short-term scene-goal, and hundreds of other issues integral to creating fiction that draws the reader in. Yet at the same time, you’ve been reading fiction created with the skills the pros take for granted since you learned to read. So it’s the result of those skills that you expect to see in what you read, and what people expect from you. But...can you tell me why it’s important to place the reader into the protagonist’s viewpoint, and how viewpoint differs from point of view as defined by the personal pronouns you choose?

Putting that aside for that moment, let look at two interlocked traps that await the hopeful author: The first is that when we tell a story to an audience, how we tell it matters every bit as much as what we say, because it’s through our performance that the audience gets the emotional part of the story. When telling a story we’re alone on stage, talking ABOUT it, in overview. So there can be no immediacy to the story, as there is on film, where we are, literally, on the scene in real-time. Instead, we the narrator, describe the events, livening them up with the techniques of acting. We speak dialog as the character would, our voice filled with emotion. We whisper and shout, change cadence and intensity, and make the story seem real. But…does any of that make it to the page? No. And what about the way we illustrate emotion with facial expression and eye movement? How about the way we visually punctuate with gesture, and use body-language. How much of that makes it to the page? Not a trace.

So what does the reader get? A storyteller’s script with no character data or performance notes. What emotion can the reader take from the words? Only what the punctuation suggests. And the word meaning? What your words suggest to THEM, based on THEIR background. How can someone read a line as you intend if they won’t know what it says till AFTER they read it? Have your computer read this opening to you to hear what the reader gets instead of what you intend.

The second problem is that because we know the characters and their backstory—plus the situation—before we type the first line, we'll tend to leave out things that are obvious to us but necessary to the reader. But when we read the work, we fill automatically in that missing information—something the reader can't do—and never see the problem.

Look at a few lines of the opening, not as the author, but as a reader—someone who just arrived:

• “It still chills my spine, they are just kids.

Who’s talking? Can’t tell.
Where are we in time and space? No way to know.
What emotion is there in the voice? None.
What prompted them to speak? You provide no hint.
What’s going on? Not a clue.

The first line and your reader is lost. Will you clarify? Who cares? First, because you can’t retroactively remove confusion, and next, because a confused reader stops reading and will never see that clarification.

• Malignant, twisted kids who we must warn you about.

Who in the hell is the “we” being warned? Who’s warning them, and why? In what way are these unknown children dangerous? You know, because for you, every line acts as a pointer to images, ideas, and knowledge, all stored in your mind. You hear your own voice, performing as you read. The reader? For them, every line acts as a pointer to images, ideas, and knowledge, all stored in *YOUR* mind. And how does that help them?

See the problem? With the best of intentions, and suffering the effects of that misunderstanding, you wrote this with the nonfiction writing skills your schooldays gave you, combined with the storytelling skills you use when someone says, “So how was your weekend? But neither work on the page. So that’s what you need to work on.

The answer is obvious: Add the tricks of writing fiction to those you currently own. Simple, right?

It is, but of course the words simple and easy aren’t interchangeable. So there’s a fair amount of work and study involved. But that’s true of any profession, so it’s no big deal, just frustrating when you hoped to be rich and famous for your writing by New Year’s Eve.

But since every successful writer faced the same problem, it’s more a rite-of-passage than a disaster. And of more importance, those skills you need to add have the power to give your words wings.

Nonfiction provides an informational experience. That’s great on the job were we’re expected to write reports and other nonfiction pieces. But it’s useless for fiction, whose goal is to provide an emotional experience. Fiction readers don’t want to hear about the story. They want to be made to feel as if they’re living it, moment-by-moment.

Some good news? If you’re meant to write you’ll find the learning a lot like going backstage in a professional theater for the first time. And if you don’t? Then you've learned something important. So in the end, it’s win/win. Right?

Your local library system’s fiction writing section is filled with the views of pros in writing, publishing, and teaching. So devouring a few good books on the subject is time wisely invested—or will be when the libraries open again.

Till then, a few suggestions: First, dig around in a few of the articles in my blog. They’re aimed at helping the new writer get a feel for the issues they need to work on. Then, download a copy of Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a very good introduction to the nuts-and-bolts issues of creating exciting scenes and linking them into a cohesive whole.

I know this wasn’t what you were hoping to hear. Who would? But since it is critical, and is holding you back, I thought you would want to know.

So dig in. And while you do, hang in there. It doesn’t get easier, but after a while, with work and study, we do become confused on a higher level.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/