Story 1: NightFall

A young vigilante begins her quest for justice

9:17 pm:
Thunder crashed loudly at the pier of Sentagon city bay, although the torrential downpour did little to drown out the blood-curdling screams echoing throughout  the thought to be abandoned warehouses

"She's a luna....!"  A man exclaimed barely managing to gurgle out as blood fills his throat

Gunshots are heard thru the building but seem to only hit old wooden crates and rusted iron beams. A shadowy figure can barely be seen darting in between the giant wooden crates. Bullets ricochet off of the old worn beams, the sparks giving the only light to the quick movement amongst the flying splinters.

The sound of the bullets had nearly grown silent among the bodies scattered across the warehouse floor. It was so quiet you could hear a whisper...one whisper in fact

"Who's funding you" her voice growled angrily

"Please.....Please it's my first night" the man gurgled out

"Poor career choice" she states as she tightens her grip around the man’s throat, lifting him higher into the air.

"Hh....he'll kill me...kill me and my family" the man begs. He struggles to free himself but he can barely manage to breathe, his vision starting to fade to black

"And what makes you think I won't" she replies "I HATE repeating myself"

"....Lisbon....Michael Lisbon....." his last words as she crushes his windpipe.

"......the Lisbon corporation..."? she asked herself "why is a car company selling weapons"?

Gang crime had been at an all-time high in the once saintly sentagon city. Every gang in the city had recently been giving all-access passes to military-grade weapons and the highest grade drugs to push. Murders and overdoses had tripled in recent months.
She had shut down over a dozen stash house throughout the city, but She this was a temporary solution and to find the source. Weeks and weeks of stakeouts had finally lead her to the warehouse. It was her biggest bust she had and her best chance for Intel she needed....and she was right.

As she rode off into the night sky she hit the remote detonator on her motorcycle. A fire or an explosion was usually the best way to get rid of the weapons and bodies. But to her surprise, nothing happened. She presses the button once more but again no response. " oh well" she thought. She'll double back later before the night was over. But first, she had to pay someone a visit.

12:37 am:

Lightning illuminates the stormy night sky behind the Lisbon corporation high rise. Blake Lisbon had been burning the midnight oil as the old heads say when suddenly the lights will go out. " Must be the storm" he said quietly to himself.

"No....no storm," a voice says suddenly in front of him.

There she was. For the first time, he had seen her. He thought his men had been making her up. Selling weapons from an inside job and using the same cover stories. Or maybe some had gotten into some of the drug supply and just lost their minds, hallucinate it. But here she was. Not some giant Amazon of a woman, not some monster. She looked like nothing more than a young woman, barely 20, although you can barely tell beneath her black hoodie, black leggings... black gloves and black boots all caked in blood and mud. A black scarf, but those eyes....those young eyes burned with rage. Such intense focus, she was practically staring a hole into Blake. She was definitely real.

Blake smirked "I thought you'd be....bigger," he said jokingly

"You can stop hitting your panic button, its disconnected" she stated sternly "calling for security
Isn't the move either. If I wanted, you'd be dead for they got here.

"So then... What can I do for you?.... I'd offer you a drink but you don't seem old enough" he said calmly. He was doing his best to maintain his composure but she could smell the fear on him.

"Why is your father trafficking illegal military arms into the city....seems a bit beneath a millionaire"? she asked.

"That's a pretty big claim to make. Too bad none of its true. I'm sure it would be all over the morning news" he responds half-laughing

She tosses a flash drive onto his desk. " video of every pick-up and dropoff. An inventory of every weapon and the record of every goon, ex-con, and thug you had working the stash houses"   she says nonchalantly

"Then why not go to the police" Blake ask

" I don't trust them. They rather have the criminals wipe each other out not giving a Damn who dies in the process" she says " and who knows who you paid off". " but what I will do is go to the news, and I know they're a bigger pain in the a*s than the cops" " now why is a millionaire trafficking guns"?

"Haha ha ha" laughs hysterically, " you think you're then the first person to threaten us! We go thru ten people like you a year"

"Answer your phone," she says angrily

The sudden vibration of his phone startled him.
He just stared shockingly at the phone afraid to answer. After a few more rings...

"Hello...."

"Bb....baby....baby help" he recognized the voice on the other end. His heart almost stopped....it was his wife.

"YOU B***H" he screams at the young woman

" baby...she tied me to a chair....a chair with a bomb...if I get up ...if I get up before she deactivates it....it goes off....she said...said that you need to tell her your....tell her your supplier or she activates the bomb.

Tears rolling down his face he blurts out " my father deals with the supplier directly. All I do arrange to pick up, transport and drop-offs. Then find and secure the stash houses" " he only tells me to pick up times" he manages to say in between sobs

"Who handles the drugs," she asked

"Mmmy...my sis ...sister bbbl.....Bly" he snorted his answer.

"Well isn't this just a family affair" she states sarcastically "give your wife and daughter a kiss for me tonight..tell your dad I'm coming for him, and... he's... NEVER met anything like me"  "and be safe out there Blake… it gets dangerous after nightfall" and with another flicker of the lights she was gone

Frantically Blake makes a call "we have an issue" he says panicked

2:00 am:

Back at her high-rise apartment Rebeckka stares at the blood-soaked picture of a young man and a young woman as tears roll down her face. As she cries herself to sleep she half hears breaking news on tv in the background. Something about an explosion down at the pier....she knew she forgot to do something...
to be continued

Reviews

[JayG]

Certainly, you get points for enthusiasm, but at the moment you face a problem that’s holding you back: You’re telling the reader a story. That might seem to be exactly what you want to do, but it’s a problem because transcribing yourself telling the story to an audience cannot work on the page. Why? Because verbal storytelling is a performance art, and how you tell the story matters as much as what you say.

When performing for an audience you’re alone on stage. There are no actors to see, and hear. There's no scenery to provide ambiance. There’s only the storyteller, whose personal-performance substitutes for that of the performers and the set.

But…you can’t play the roles of the one shooting, the one being shot, and the bystander at the same time without seeming silly, so instead, the storyteller talks ABOUT the events dramatically, adding emotion to the telling, to make it fun for the audience. Transcribe that and you remove the performance, leaving only the script, minus the notes on how you want the reader to perform. Have your computer read it to you to hear how different what the reader gets is from what you hear as you read. That's a good editing technique, in any case.

The thing we all forget when we turn to recording our stories is that Fiction-Writing is a profession, and not an easy one to master, at that. And like all professions, its specialized knowledge and craft is acquired IN ADDITION to the general set of skills we’re given in school.

After all, how much time did your teachers spend on the structure of a scene on the page, and why it differs so greatly from one on the screen or stage? Zero, right? But if you don’t know what a scene is, and how to manage the elements that make it up—or even what they are, how can you write one? Will you make use of the short-term scene-goal to keep from having to step on stage to explain that there’s a problem? Will you address the three issues we need to clarify, quickly, on entering any scene, so as to provide context for what’s going on?

As the author, you cheat when you read. First, because, unlike the reader, you can hear and visualize your storytelling performance as you read. For you the narrator’s voice—your voice—is filled with emotion. The reader gets what punctuation suggests...to them. You know how you intend the reader to take the words. The reader, though, has what the words suggest based on THEIR background, not your intent. And, you know the situation, the backstory, and the character motivation before you read the first word.

Look at how different what the reader, who has none of that, gets ifrom your opening:

• Thunder crashed loudly at the pier of Sentagon city bay,

Okay, Sentagon City—wherever that is—has only one pier. Seems kind of odd that they only have one. It’s probably not what you meant, but it is what you said. And since we just arrived, and don’t know where we are in time and space, you just opened with version of the single worst story opening in history, Bulwar-Lytton’s, “It was a dark and stormy night…”

Why does the reader care what the weather is? After all the scene takes place inside. And your protagonist is too busy to notice the weather.

You’re thinking in terms of background visuals that the protagonist is ignoring. So who’s noticing this, and reporting it as if it matters? It can’t be you. You’re not in the story or on the scene.

• although the torrential downpour did little to drown out the blood-curdling screams echoing throughout the thought to be abandoned warehouses

Okay, so, all over an unknown number of warehouses there are many people screaming for unknown reasons. Again, not what you meant, but it is what you told the reader. And given that they have no context, and cannot see the mental images you do as you wrote, they have only what you say.

See why one of the first things a writer must learn is to address where we are in time and space, what’s going on, and whose skin we wear, on entering any scene? Your goal, remember, isn’t to make the reader know what happens. That’s history, and how many history books have you read for fun? Your goal is to make the reader LIVE the events, AS the protagonist, and in real-time.

Look at another story-opening, this one from, Portal to Sygano:
- - - - -
Gary Niles locked the car’s door and headed across the parking lot to grab a grocery cart. A bit of shopping, then lunch, followed by an afternoon spent chasing a golf ball, would get the weekend off to a good start.
- - - - -
So…two sentences, 41 words, and we know who we are, where we are, what’s going on, and, the protagonist’s short-term scene-goal. We even have had a bit of character development, know that the protagonist is an adult, and drives his own car.

• "She's a luna....!" A man exclaimed barely managing to gurgle out as blood fills his throat

So a nameless man tells unknown people that an unknown female is a “luna” (whatever that is), followed by impossible punctuation (you can’t trail off excitedly), and somehow, speaks in a “gurgle.” Where is he? No clue. Who’s he talking about? No clue. How can he talk in a gurgle? Damned if I know. Try saying what he does in a gurgle. When you stop laughing, think of a better way to put it.

My point is: while you know what’s going on, and can both hear and see the events in your mind as you read, the reader lacks all context, And a confused reader is one who is closing the cover. Sure, if they read on it’ll make sense later, but they won’t.

Again, compare that to what come next the other opening:
- - - - -
Pulling a cart free he stepped back, and into something soft and warm. The yelp of surprise that followed was obviously female.
- - - - -
So, a man we know does what he started out to do, but in doing it, backs into a female. Note that “Soft and warm,” implies that he’s hit skin, so she’s not wearing a lot of clothing.

Notice too, that the storyteller isn't explaining what happened. Gary is living it, in real-time, not overview. Did the line make you want to know who he backed into? If so, you’re mirroring Gary’s reaction, which means you’re on the scene, as him, not with a storyteller who’s reporting and explaining. As E. L. Doctorow put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

• Gunshots are heard thru the building but seem to only hit old wooden crates and rusted iron beams.

A moment ago it was warehouses. When did it become just one?

That aside, this is a critical point: Again, who’s observing this. Not the protagonist. Not you. And if we don’t know who’s shooting, and what they’re shooting at, who cares what they hit?

You know what's going on. Your protagonist knows. The people shooting know. But who did you write this for? Shouldn’t they know? Should they be living the adventure, or reading a report about it, in overview?

Here’s the deal: It’s not a matter of how well you write, or your talent. It’s not about the story, either. It’s that in our school days we learn ONLY nonfiction writing skills, to prepare us for the needs of our future employers. Nonfiction writing provides an informational experience, and by definition, will read like a report or essay. Its techniques are those you’re using here, fact-based and author-centric. But the goal of fiction is to provide an emotional experience. Its methodology is emotion-based and character-centric, an approach to writing that your teachers never mentioned. So, not knowing there was another way, like pretty much all hopeful writers, you made use of the skills you own. It might be nice if our reading taught us those skills but does eating teach us to cook?

All your life, you’ve been choosing fiction that was created with the skills the pros take for granted. Pick up what wasn’t written with those skills and you know it in a paragraph. More to the point, your reader knows when they turn to yours.

The solution? Simple…add those tricks to your own toolbox. Give your talent some tools to work with. As the great Mark Twain put it: “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.”

Unfortunately, the words “simple” and “easy” aren’t interchangeable. You will, after all, be learning the skills of a profession, and it’s a lot more than a list of, “Do this instead of that.” But since you’ll learning how to do something you want to do, the learning will be a lot like going backstage in a professional theater for the first time. And the practice is writing stories. So what’s not to like? And with that I can help.

First, for a better feel for the differences in approach between fiction and nonfiction, you might want to dig through a few of the articles in my WordPress writing blog (URL link at the bottom). They’re aimed at the hopeful writer. And if they seem to make sense, and are something you want to pursue further, follow the link below this paragraph to pick up a free copy of the best book I've found on the nuts-and-bolts issues of creating scenes that sing to the reader, and linking them into an exciting whole. It’s the book that got me my first publishing contract, and maybe it'll do that for you.
https://ru.b-ok2.org/book/2640776/e749ea

So dig in. As you master the skills, and the protagonist becomes your writing partner, whispering suggestions and warnings in your ear, you’ll find that the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

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