My first post

A Story by Bardinarms

I thought i would post something to get the ball rolling this is the start of a book

The world has begun its downward spiral. The economy is collapsing, rendering the dollar worthless. As the neighbourhood dims, mirroring the final stages of sunset, Lucy rides her scooter home, questioning the point of it all. Her once shiny red scooter has now dulled, resembling a coin worn through the ages. Her mousey brown hair dances in the air behind her. The cool frost bites at her fingers as she makes her final turns towards home. Safety has become a relic of the past; the world is no longer what it once was. Everything once taken for granted has vanished.

Approaching a roundabout near her home, a light pierces the gloom. Out of place, she notices a gathering forming ahead. A sick feeling rises in her stomach as she draws closer. It's a gathering of the Mandricks, those ostracized by society. Harmless when pacified by their daily dose of scrolling through social feeds, they huddle around a second-rate iPhone, absorbed like zombies in a horror film, unable to lift their heads. Lucy doesn’t mind as long as she can slip past and make it home.

© 2024 Bardinarms

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LVW	you have a way to paint a picture with words. Posted 5 Months Ago you have a way to paint a picture with words. Rating /100

JayG

Welcome.

I hate to hit you with this, but...we don't write fiction with the same set of writing skills that we're given in school — the ones you used for this. It's the single most common trap in writing, because the pros make it seem so natural and easy that we forget that they offer degrees in Commercial Fiction Writing, and, that there are lots of books on fiction writing technique.

We know we don't leave school ready to write a screenplay or work as a journalist, but almost no one thinks to apply apply that idea to Commercial Fiction Writing — including me when I began writing.

We also forget that the purpose of public education is to supply employers with workers who have a set of predictable, and useful to the employer, set of skills. The problem is, when it comes to writing, employers need us to write reports, letters, and other nonfiction applications.

And we can't get around that by transcribing ourselves telling a story because storytelling is performance art, where HOW you tell the story matters as much as what you say, because it's in the elements of that performance that the emotional content of the story lies: Tone; cadence; meaningful pauses for breath; the visual punctuation of gesture, body-language, eye movement; and, facial expression changes. But none of that makes it to the reader. So they get a storyteller's script without a clue of how to perform it.

We also forget that for all of our lives, we've chosen fiction that was written and edited with the tools of the profession. And because, as always, art conceals art, we don't see the tools in use, we see the result of using those tools. More than that, we expect to see that, and will reject work that was prepared without those tools in a paragraph or two.

In short, to write fiction we must become fiction writers. No way around that and there ae no shortcuts.

There's no reason you can't acquire those skills via self-study. And because writing is something you want to do, the learning will be interesting. And the result, when you master those skills, is that the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun/ You'll learn how to end the beginning and begin the ending, the three issues we need to address on entering a scene, and, why scenes always end in disaster for the protagonist.

To help, try this: Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, is an excellent first book. Reading it feels like sitting with Deb as she talks about writing. You can read or download it, free, on the archive site listed below:
https://archive.org/details/goal.motivation.conflictdebradixon/page/n5/mode/2up

And if an overview of the differences from the kind of writing we're given in school would help, I'm vain enough to think my articles and YouTube Videos can do that.

So... I know this is pretty far from what you hoped to see, but as I said, you have a LOT of company, and the problem is unrelated to talent. So jump in. And, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

________
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

Posted 5 Months Ago

Welcome.

I hate to hit you with this, but...we don't write fiction with the same set of writing skills that we're given in school — the ones you used for this. It's the single most common trap in writing, because the pros make it seem so natural and easy that we forget that they offer degrees in Commercial Fiction Writing, and, that there are lots of books on fiction writing technique.

We know we don't leave school ready to write a screenplay or work as a journalist, but almost no one thinks to apply apply that idea to Commercial Fiction Writing — including me when I began writing.

We also forget that the purpose of public education is to supply employers with workers who have a set of predictable, and useful to the employer, set of skills. The problem is, when it comes to writing, employers need us to write reports, letters, and other nonfiction applications.

And we can't get around that by transcribing ourselves telling a story because storytelling is performance art, where HOW you tell the story matters as much as what you say, because it's in the elements of that performance that the emotional content of the story lies: Tone; cadence; meaningful pauses for breath; the visual punctuation of gesture, body-language, eye movement; and, facial expression changes. But none of that makes it to the reader. So they get a storyteller's script without a clue of how to perform it.

We also forget that for all of our lives, we've chosen fiction that was written and edited with the tools of the profession. And because, as always, art conceals art, we don't see the tools in use, we see the result of using those tools. More than that, we expect to see that, and will reject work that was prepared without those tools in a paragraph or two.

In short, to write fiction we must become fiction writers. No way around that and there ae no shortcuts.

There's no reason you can't acquire those skills via self-study. And because writing is something you want to do, the learning will be interesting. And the result, when you master those skills, is that the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun/ You'll learn how to end the beginning and begin the ending, the three issues we need to address on entering a scene, and, why scenes always end in disaster for the protagonist.

To help, try this: Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, is an excellent first book. Reading it feels like sitting with Deb as she talks about writing. You can read or download it, free, on the archive site listed below:
https://archive.org/details/goal.motivation.conflictdebradixon/page/n5/mode/2up

And if an overview of the differences from the kind of writing we're given in school would help, I'm vain enough to think my articles and YouTube Videos can do that.

So... I know this is pretty far from what you hoped to see, but as I said, you have a LOT of company, and the problem is unrelated to talent. So jump in. And, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
Articles:  https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos:  https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

________
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” 
~ E. L. Doctorow

Rating /100