A Chance Encounter

Chapter 1

I sit anxiously by the river. Hugging my knees, with my head wresting just above my knee cap. I've watched this same river over a thousand times. It helps the time go by.

From across the bridges, I can see civilians walking. It's been a few years since we've been allowed to walk outside again.

Some of us have not quite gotten over the last pandemic, and are still suffering mentally as a result. A notification pings from my smart watch. It's just another email.

A few more people pass by the river before I begin to study the environment. Trash and Rubble fill the streets. The air is more polluted than before. The poor have gotten poorer, the rich more rich, and the middle class non existent. Still, an elder Chinese man sits in a squat position a few cubits away, smoking a cigarette. 

We never speak, but we greet each other through eye contact. He likes to watch the river and people as well. The smell of nicotine sweeps my nose and I am reminded of my grandmother. A big consumer of Tabaco products. She single handedly could've kept the Tabaco industry afloat.

If only she had been given a hundred more years. The nostalgia compels me to ask the man for a cigarette. I work my way off the ground, remnants of dirt and grass manage to cover my pants. 

I dust them off when I notice a man with a top hat and trench coat standing before me. I'm startled, but his smile reassures me. 

"Good day."

He says. 

"Good day to you. Is there something you need?"

The pandemic has made us less trusting towards one another. Not many engage in casual conversation these days.

The man smiles expectantly. 

"I wanted to pose a question."

I pause to consider what he could want to ask someone like me. A slew of possibilities run through my mind

before I finally respond.

"Go ahead then."

"Straight to the point now, are we?"

It was the city way. We didn't have much time to deal with casualties. Especially now that 80 hour work weeks had 

been introduced. 

"What if I answered all of your problems, every last one of them? But only for a small price?"

"Small meaning?"

"You live your life simplistically. No additives, no showiness, no dramatics, no attention seeking behavior. Just pure, simple, bliss."

"So you want me to be anything but annoying?"

The man chuckles.

"You'd be surprised how difficult of a task this is for some people."

"So all I have to do is try my best to blend in, and just like that, you'll relieve me of every waking burden."

He looks down and engages in a partial smile before responding.

"No my dear, you will be simply resorting to the most natural of instincts. Mind if I show you a case study?"

I nod in accordance. 

The man then sits down his briefcase. It unfolds on its own, as a teleprompter appears. A woman begins to speak.

"SOHLIS is my life. SOHLIS changed me entire life."

I see her running around frolicking among others who participated in the program. They seem happy and care free. Things I haven't felt since childhood. I continue to watch the girls frolic. The man takes notice of where my attention is being directed.

"You know,"

He attempts to regain my attention

"Many women would do anything for the ability to be relieved of worries presented by this masculine society."

He loses me. I'm not one to conform to gender norms or patriarchal jargon. He takes note of my disposition and reforms his 

stance.

"How old were you when you became orphan to the world?"

My heart stopped. Suddenly, the world felt still. Very still. My mind went blank before a slew of memories raced to the forefront of my mind. How could he possibly know this about me?

"I know you, Diana. I know you because I made you." 

I stare at him more closely. What could he possibly mean? He doesn't resemble anyone I've ever known. My anxiety picks up in pace before I fall to my knees. A slew of voices infiltrate my mind in succession.

"Stupid"

"Stupid!"

"Stupid"

"You're nobody"

"You're better off dead"

"No one would miss you if you're gone"

I grab my head and attempt to hide my discomfort. 

"How long have you been hearing the voices?"

Before I could even answer, he responds.

"Two years now?"

I'm in disbelief. Another concept he just magically seems to know about me. 

"Who.. who are you?"

"On your feet child. Come now, get up."

I hesitantly work my way back to standing upright. Though while standing up, it looks like the man has magically grown in size?

"Uh, did you? Did you get taller?"

He chuckles while pulling me to walk with him.

"The earth is no good. The people have corrupted the land."

He pauses. I listen closely, eager to see what he will say next.

"You, Diana, have observed this yourself. No?"

I am unsure how to respond. 

"That is why you choose to be alone." 

Reviews

[JayG]

• I sit anxiously by the river. Hugging my knees, with my head wresting just above my knee cap. I've watched this same river over a thousand times. It helps the time go by.

You’re trying to write fiction by transcribing yourself talking to the reader, as you would at a campfire or podium. But that cannot work for many reasons.

1. In all the world, only you know the emotion to place in the narrator’s voice. Have your computer read this to you to hear why it can’t work.
2. In all the world only you know the elements of the storyteller’s performance: the gestures that visually punctuate; the facial expressions and eye movement; the body language that amplifies or moderates emotion. When you read it, it’s all there and works. But what he reader has is a storyteller’s script, minus the all-important nots on HOW to perform it.
3. Because you begin reading already knowing who we are, where we are, and what’s going on, you'll leave out things that seem obvious to you, robbing the reader of needed context.
4. The writing techniques you perfected by writing the reports you were assigned in school made you good at writing nonfiction. But those skills are useless for fiction, because reports inform. Fiction entertains by involving the reader emotionally.

Compounding the problem, because you do know the story, the setting, the characters and their backstories BEFORE you read the first word, you have context the reader lacks, you can perform the storytelling properly. So it works...for you, and you’ll see no problems. And since no one address the problem they don’t see as being one, you’ll continuing working on the project, satisfied that it it works well.

To demonstrate, look at the opening, not as the all knowing author, but as a reader must:

• I sit anxiously by the river.

So, someone unknown, of unknown gender and age, who may either be worried about something, or have an emotional problem, sits by an unknown river, in an unknown country, in an unknown century, for unknown reasons. You know all the whys, but the reader has been given no context to make the words meaningful.

Will reading on clarify? Who cares? This is their first impression, and no one reads on when the words make no sense. Were this a submission to a publisher, here is where the rejection would come, if not corrected.

• Hugging my knees, with my head wresting just above my knee cap.

It’s “resting” And “kneecap.” Edit, edit, edit. Never show the reader anything but your “A” game.

That aside: So...we now know exactly how this unknown person is sitting. Again, who cares? That’s visual data that’s irrelevant. Would the story change in the slightest were they to have their head unsupported, or resting on their forearm? No. So why waste words on something that that takes time to read but provides no useful information?

• I've watched this same river over a thousand times.

So...this unknown character is talking TO the reader instead of doing something. So, the story has yet to begin; But that’s not how fiction is written. On the page, story happens, and does so as we-read-it. In fact, if done well, it feels as if we’re living the events, as the protagonist. Who wants to read the transcription of a lecture? Certainly not readers.

Okay, now that I’ve hit you over the head, let me tell you how to fix the problem.

In simple terms, the reason there is a problem is that we forget that the purpose of public education is to provide employers with a pool of workers who possess a useful set of general skills. In the case of writing, it’s nonfiction. The skills of professions, like Commercial Fiction Writing, are acquired IN-ADDITION to those school-day skills.

We can’t use the skills of storytelling because theirs is a unique environment. The storyteller doesn’t have the actors that film or the page has, so they substitute THEIR performance, which, as I’ve pointed out, cannot work on the page. Nor can the nonfiction skills we were given in school, because they’re inappropriate to the task.

To write fiction you need the skills that the pros take for granted. And though—after all the time you spent at the keyboard writing this—it may seem a disaster, it’s not.

Why not? Because if you truly are meant to write fiction the learning will be a lot like going backstage at the theater for the first time. And once you do master those skills, the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun.

But, fair warning. It’s a lot more than a list of, “Do this instead of that." You'll be learning a profession, and doing that takes study, dedication, and practice. No way around it. But given that learning what you want to know is never a chore, it’s no big deal. And the practice is writing stories

To help, several suggestions:

If an overview of the major differences between the skills of nonfiction and those of fiction would help, you might check my articles and videos.

For the actual skills, I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

So, I know I’ve not made you happy...again, but try a few chapters of that book. I think you’ll find it eye-opening.

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