The Woods

A Story by Dean Wyes

Originally written on January 2017

“Don’t go too deep into the woods.”

Kai had heard that warning ever since he was allowed to play outside of his house. Adults had warned him of many things. Don’t run with sharp objects, step away from the kitchen when the stove is on, never to open the door to strangers, among other things. But the one they had always told every day had to be that.

“Why?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“But why?”

“Because nothing there is safe, stop asking and go wash up, your cousin will be here soon.”

Kai went to do as he was asked but made sure to stomp his feet as loud as he could on his way to the sink, whether his parents noticed or not he couldn’t tell. It was Sunday and Sundays meant seeing his younger cousin Jie and because he was the older cousin he had to make sure she didn’t wander into the woods.

He hated Sundays. He wanted to be with his friends and play ‘escape the merry men’, the game where all kids would go to a tree from the forest limit and put their hands, all quiet until one would start to sing.

“Count to three,

Sing with me

Or he will eat,

Count to five

Stay alive

He will arrive.

Count to eight

Don’t be late

You will be bait.

Count to ten

Start again

Please the wolf men”

They would always start slow and end up shouting the last words at the trees to run opposite of the forest line, the last kid to arrive being one of the wolf men until only one was left. But no one knew where the song came from, or if there were really werewolves in the woods.

Three knocks on the door made Kai pout and follow his mother to welcome his aunt and cousin. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, a toothy grin and a sudden hug being her way of saying hello.

“Why don’t you two go play outside?” his mother said “but remember, don’t go to deep into the woods.”

Kai nodded but he was frowning, he didn’t want to go play with Jie, he wanted to go with his friends. She was already babbling to him about what she had done that week, what she had eaten the day before and how excited she was to find daisies for a flower crown she wanted to make for her mother.

“Whatever,” Kai replied, his feet kicking the dirt of the path, soiling his shoes and socks. His mom was not going to be pleased but he could always blame it on Jie. It wasn’t going to work but it was worth the shot.

Jie frowned at him, called him a meanie for not listening and let go of his hand to find the flowers, leaving Kai to kick pebbles towards the trees. It was then when he heard a rustle and realized he couldn’t tell where they were. The trees looked all the same but darker the further he tried to see and the path wasn’t as visible as the one he should follow. They had gone off tray and were lost.

“We have to go.” Kai turned to where Jie was still plucking weeds out of the flowers “Jie! We have to-“

A growl made him look up and his feet froze on the spot. It was bigger than his house, with a snout so big with yellow fangs all crooked the thing couldn’t close its mouth right. It had milky eyes but the ears were twitching, nose sniffing so close Kai feared it was able to smell them.

“We have to go” he tried to whisper, but his throat was dry and his knees were shaking, he could see one of its paws so close to Jie’s head with claws that could easily cut through her like paper but Jie didn’t pay him attention.

“Jie…there’s something behind you…”

“Liar! You are making it up!”

The wolf man turned its head and howled.

© 2019 Dean Wyes

My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register

Reviews

JayG

• “Don’t go too deep into the woods.”

Look at this as a reader must. You know who’s speaking and their tone. You know where we are and what’s going on. So for you this is meaningful. To a reader, it’s a line spoken in a monotone, by someone unknown, in an unknown place and time, to someone unknown, for unknown purpose.

Clearly, what the reader gets isn’t what you intended. And lacking context it tells the reader nothing meaningful.

• Kai had heard that warning ever since he was allowed to play outside of his house.

I give up. Who’s Kai? Where are we in time and space? What’s going on? Unless we know that, this too, is meaningless. It may be that if we read on it will be made clear. But two things come into play. First, the reader has no way to know if this was deliberately confusing or if you screwed up. And given that there are thousands of other books, all shouting, “Read me I’m better,” the reader may desert you here. Of more importance, an agent or acquiring editor will. Why? Because you cannot retroactively remove confusion.

• Adults had warned him of many things. Don’t run with sharp objects,

Yup, they told him to wipe himself, not to pick his nose, and literally, thousands of things. But nothing you mentioned, or that I added, have the slightest relevance to the scene in progress.

You placed the protagonist into the scene by inference. And then, before the poor kid hears, "Action!" you leave him standing there while you, someone not on the scene or in the story, provide an info-dump of backstory and gossip that the reader has not been made to want to know. As you read youn smile that the information is interesting. As the reader does, they wantr to know what the first line was about, and so will skim till they come to action. Not what you want.

I truly wish there were some more gentle way of breaking this news, but this is not a stor, as readers in the bookstore or publishing people view that. Instead, you, as yourself, are in effect, saying, “Let me tell you about this kid I know of.”

You’re taking the approach that the kid’s life and history is what matters to a reader, and that they will want to know about him. But that’s NOT story. Story is what’s happening to the protagonist in the moment that character calls “now.” It takes place within that moment—as that character views it—and advances in what is for the character, real-time.

No one has ever called a history book a page-turner. Why? Because it has no immediacy. It’s just a record of events. It contains all the elements of fiction. There’s drama, betrayal, romance, passion, and a cast of thousands. But it’s told in overview, which means there’s zero emotional content for-the-reader.

Think of yourself reading a horror story. At some point the protagonist feels terror. Who cares? Not the reader. They want the author to terrorize them, and make THEM afraid to turn out the lights, not learn of someone else's fears. And you flat-out cannot do that with the nonfiction writing skills we learn in school. All professions are learned IN ADDITION to our schoolday skills, so of course we don’t own the knowledge of how to write the emotion-based prose of fiction. All we learn is fact-based writing skills, as this story is written with. No one teaches us how to write in a character-centric way, they gave is only author-centric skills.

Doubt that? How many teachers worked on your dialog and tag skills? None, right? I mean no insult, but based on your dialog, the answer is that they didn’t tell you that body language matters a great deal, that people hesitate, reflect, react, and even perform other tasks as they converse, and that leaving that out kills any sense of realism.

It’s not a matter of how much talent you have, but training that talent. Without that it’s unused potential. It’s not about good or bad writing, it’s about owning the skills needed.

For all we know you have talent oozing from every pore. But till that talent has the knowledge and tools needed it might as well not exist. And those tools are what this is all about.

In school we make the reasonable assumption that since the skill we were given is called writing, and the profession is Fiction-writing, that shared word says they’re related. In reality, the writing techniques we learned are designed to inform, while those of fiction are used to evoke a reader’s emotion, as a form of entertainment.

As company, you have pretty much every other hopeful writer, so it’s no big deal, and more a rite-of-passage than a disaster. But still, if you hope to please people who have selected nothing but professionally written and prepared fiction since they learned to read, you have no choice but to learn those techniques. They’re not hard to find, the library’s fiction writing section is loaded with books on the subject. And while learning and perfecting them, like any other professional skill, takes time and practice, they’re as easy to master as nonfiction was.

So, I know this isn’t news you were hoping to hear. But it is something you need to know. And if you are meant to write, you’ll love the learning, which can feel like going backstage at the theater.

A suggestion I usually make, is to take a look at the articles in my writing blog to get a feel for the breadth of the field, and why learning the craft is necessary. But in the end, always go to the pros. With them, even if you disagree, you know that what they suggest works for them, and keeps them in food and housing.

As for a good book on the basics of creating a scene that will sing to the reader, and how to sew your scenes into a cohesive story, try Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, available from any online bookseller, or Deb’s website.

Another, better book, though it’s a a more difficult book and can be dry at times, is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer.

There are many others. So have at it. If you love the learning you’ll love the improvement in your writing. If not, you’ve learned something important. Either way, you win.

So have at it. Replace that cart-horse of writing your schooldays gave you with Pegasus. Then, who knows where you’ll fly too?

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

Posted 5 Years Ago

• “Don’t go too deep into the woods.”

Look at this as a reader must. You know who’s speaking and their tone. You know where we are and what’s going on. So for you this is meaningful. To a reader, it’s a line spoken in a monotone, by someone unknown, in an unknown place and time, to someone unknown, for unknown purpose.

Clearly, what the reader gets isn’t what you intended. And lacking context it tells the reader nothing meaningful.

• Kai had heard that warning ever since he was allowed to play outside of his house.

I give up. Who’s Kai? Where are we in time and space? What’s going on? Unless we know that, this too, is meaningless. It may be that if we read on it will be made clear. But two things come into play. First, the reader has no way to know if this was deliberately confusing or if you screwed up. And given that there are thousands of other books, all shouting, “Read me I’m better,” the reader may desert you here. Of more importance, an agent or acquiring editor will. Why? Because you cannot retroactively remove confusion.

• Adults had warned him of many things. Don’t run with sharp objects,

Yup, they told him to wipe himself, not to pick his nose, and literally, thousands of things. But nothing you mentioned, or that I added, have the slightest relevance to the scene in progress.

You placed the protagonist into the scene by inference. And then, before the poor kid hears, "Action!" you leave him standing there while you, someone not on the scene or in the story, provide an info-dump of backstory and gossip that the reader has not been made to want to know. As you read youn smile that the information is interesting. As the reader does, they wantr to know what the first line was about, and so will skim till they come to action. Not what you want.

I truly wish there were some more gentle way of breaking this news, but this is not a stor, as readers in the bookstore or publishing people view that. Instead, you, as yourself, are in effect, saying, “Let me tell you about this kid I know of.”

You’re taking the approach that the kid’s life and history is what matters to a reader, and that they will want to know about him. But that’s NOT story. Story is what’s happening to the protagonist in the moment that character calls “now.” It takes place within that moment—as that character views it—and advances in what is for the character, real-time.

No one has ever called a history book a page-turner. Why? Because it has no immediacy. It’s just a record of events. It contains all the elements of fiction. There’s drama, betrayal, romance, passion, and a cast of thousands. But it’s told in overview, which means there’s zero emotional content for-the-reader.

Think of yourself reading a horror story. At some point the protagonist feels terror. Who cares? Not the reader. They want the author to terrorize them, and make THEM afraid to turn out the lights, not learn of someone else's fears. And you flat-out cannot do that with the nonfiction writing skills we learn in school. All professions are learned IN ADDITION to our schoolday skills, so of course we don’t own the knowledge of how to write the emotion-based prose of fiction. All we learn is fact-based writing skills, as this story is written with. No one teaches us how to write in a character-centric way, they gave is only author-centric skills.

Doubt that? How many teachers worked on your dialog and tag skills? None, right?  I mean no insult, but based on your dialog, the answer is that they didn’t tell you that body language matters a great deal, that people hesitate, reflect, react, and even perform other tasks as they converse, and that leaving that out kills any sense of realism.

It’s not a matter of how much talent you have, but training that talent. Without that it’s unused potential. It’s not about good or bad writing, it’s about owning the skills needed.

For all we know you have talent oozing from every pore. But till that talent has the knowledge and tools needed it might as well not exist. And those tools are what this is all about.

In school we make the reasonable assumption that since the skill we were given is called writing, and the profession is Fiction-writing, that shared word says they’re related. In reality, the writing techniques we learned are designed to inform, while those of fiction are used to evoke a reader’s emotion, as a form of entertainment.

As company, you have pretty much every other hopeful writer, so it’s no big deal, and more a rite-of-passage than a disaster. But still, if you hope to please people who have selected nothing but professionally written and prepared fiction since they learned to read, you have no choice but to learn those techniques. They’re not hard to find, the library’s fiction writing section is loaded with books on the subject. And while learning and perfecting them, like any other professional skill, takes time and practice, they’re as easy to master as nonfiction was.

So, I know this isn’t news you were hoping to hear. But it is something you need to know. And if you are meant to write, you’ll love the learning, which can feel like going backstage at the theater.

A suggestion I usually make, is to take a look at the articles in my writing blog to get a feel for the breadth of the field, and why learning the craft is necessary. But in the end, always go to the pros. With them, even if you disagree, you know that what they suggest works for them, and keeps them in food and housing.

As for a good book on the basics of creating a scene that will sing to the reader, and how to sew your scenes into a cohesive story, try Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, available from any online bookseller, or Deb’s website.

Another, better book, though it’s a a more difficult book and can be dry at times, is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer.

There are many others. So have at it. If you love the learning you’ll love the improvement in your writing. If not, you’ve learned something important. Either way, you win.

So have at it. Replace that cart-horse of writing your schooldays gave you with Pegasus. Then, who knows where you’ll fly too?

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

Rating /100