Concerning Hector

a story about an end

Hector's world was getting smaller all the time. Funny thing was, even while friends and relatives fell out of it, new sensations and sounds crowded in.

Five and six years ago, respectively, Hector lost his father and mother. They were now beyond the veil, or maybe the vale, definitely beyond whatever it was. Yet it seemed to Hector that his parents met each other out there, beyond his world, in a suspended light full of love for each other, happy together. It seemed good.

Four years ago, Hector's wife left to live with her new lover in another country. There were no children. It was hard, but doable. Hector communicated with a distant nephew for a while, until that boy sent no more email. That was also a little hard, but doable. Family time seemed to be over. Okay.

Then Hector's last close friend died. After Hector saw that man be so sick in the hospital, surrounded by strangers and an increasing number of machines, eyes frantic when Hector was forced to leave... well, Hector swore then that he'd die at home, like his parents did. They did it right.

To say Hector felt down elevated him a level or two, but some new things surprised him. When he sold his car, he thought he'd walk everywhere and achieve the robust health that had started to elude his parents when they aged.

He started walking okay, but sometimes he felt tired when he'd gone a short distance. He took to using a hiking stick and carried the few things he bought in a backpack. That seemed to help. For a while.

Sleep became difficult. He heard things he couldn't understand. A strident whistle woke him sometimes. He had neighbors it might have been, but it often seemed to be in the same room with him. He heard growls from his own bed sometimes. They were bad dreams, he supposed.

Hector gradually realized the sounds came from inside him. From his lungs. Okay. He had a little trouble breathing on occasion. It was allergies, maybe. He stocked up on over-the-counter medications and thought little of it. Usually.

After several months, maybe a year, Hector knew why certain kinds of breathing was called wheezing. It sounded just like that word, only high and nasally and from his chest. There were times when it was a sudden struggle to get air in his lungs, to inhale past the region of his collarbones or so. Those times he felt like a bumper car left all alone on a wide empty floor, power cut, no way to move or be.

Then it would pass.

Now it was approaching October, and the air was fresh and cold. It seemed to come from impossibly snowy mountaintops somewhere. It should have been invigorating. Hector should have raked leaves and taken brisk walks. Maybe he should have thought about decorating and preparing treats for Halloween.

Instead, he crept from room to room, ate the chicken soup of an invalid, and buried his thoughts in books.

Hector hummed aloud every time he exhaled his breath. Inhaling was frightening to think about, so he didn't. He just breathed in little bits of air and hummed them out with a certain satisfaction that he was alive. Inhale, hum, inhale, hum, until he didn't notice it anymore.

He still got dressed every day, sort of, and looked out the windows at the red leaves on the elms and on the frosty ground. He was living his life on his terms, even if it was slow. He was almost an old man, and he was almost satisfied.

It was the wheezing, the occasional short-winded alarm, the dreaming about struggling for air that was distracting.

It was the fear.

He just had to beat the fear. Immersion in books helped him do that. They provided all kinds of adventures while he sat still. Inhale, hum, rattle, wheeze, turn the page.

The radio muttered, autumn leaves turned brown, children went to costume parties, and Hector decided to mainly stay in bed. There was no reason to dress anymore, and very little reason to eat much. Books could be downloaded onto his phone and he didn't have to hold them anymore. He was saving the trees.

Lethargy and constant reading made time less important altogether.

Except when he couldn't breathe. Then it was wicked hard, like jumping into a pool and finding a shallow puddle underfoot instead. His lungs hurt. He growled and tried again until his vision cleared. It made him angry.

At first, Hector tried standing up or sitting up to catch his breath. Finally he just stayed down. He read books, and he breathed in and hummed out until one day it just didn't work. The weight on his chest was too much.

Then the fear bloomed completely. It was a huge black talon that opened all around him, then slowly closed over his entire body, squeezing away thought and sound and even his sense of self, his sense of humanity. He was caught. Life couldn't end like this, it wasn't fair, he had so much to do and he just. Couldn't. Breathe.

It was silent. Dark. Lifeless.

Then Hector felt his very being come apart, flung to the night sky like a handful of seeds that expanded into a sweep of stars. The seed-stars gathered speed and light, and there were millions of them. They looked like celestial glitter, dancing and spreading until they grew still.

Hector sensed something he never suspected was possible. But he didn't really sense it. He didn't even know it. He simply was it. What a discovery....

Reviews

[Vertigo Cat1111]

I love this. It’s written beautifully and powerfully, with emotions and strong visuals. And I love the story. It’s very relatable in a sense. The feeling of fear taking over and not wanting to feel that one thing that scares you so much. Trouble breathing is actually one of my worst fears (as it’s probably everyone’s lol) and the way you described the sensation and experience throughout was excellently written and chilling. Thank you for sharing! Have fun and good luck in your writing endeavors, friend! 💙

[JayG]

• Hector's world was getting smaller all the time. Funny thing was, even while friends and relatives fell out of it, new sensations and sounds crowded in

Makes no sense. First you say his world is getting smaller, but then show that it’s not—that for everything lost something new comes in. Sure, if we take your intent into account, it works, but does the reader have access to your intent? No. They need context as, or before they read a given line or it's just words-in-a-row, meaning uncertain.

• Five and six years ago, respectively, Hector lost his father and mother.

Why do we care how long ago he lost them? Would the story change were it a different number of years, or even had he just moved to a different city? You’re talking about what happened, but story is what’s happening in the moment the protagonist calls “now.” History is irrelevant to the scene taking place.

Look at this chapter. What happened? Nothing. The entire chapter, 939 words, or, the first 4+ standard manuscript pages and there was not a single conversation, no decisions, no observations, or, plot movement. What we got was a 4 page info-dump of backstory, provided in a dispassionate voice by a narrator whose performance has been stripped away.

For you the narrator’s voice—your voice—is filled with emotion. For you the narrator’s face changes expression. For you there are gestures and body language. But only for you. For the reader? It’s a report on someone of unknown age, who lives in an unspecified place, has an unknown background, and lived what sounds like a boring life.

Here’s the deal: Readers don’t care about the past. They don’t want to get to know the protagonist. They don’t want summation and overview, because they come to you seeking an emotional, not an informational, experience. They expect you to make the story so real that if someone hurts the protagonist the reader cries out in pain. They want you to make THEM live the story as-the-protagonist, and, in real-time. They want to be made to care and feel.

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.” And how much time did your teachers spend on how to do that? None.

Of course they didn’t. They were preparing you for life as an employed adult, and giving you the skills employers require, like the ability to write letters and reports—in other words, nonfiction writing skills.

Fiction-Writing is a profession, one they offer degree programs in. And we learn nothing about the techniques of that profession by reading fiction because we see only the result of using the skills, not the skills.

But that means that the problems I point to aren’t a matter of talent, or even how well you write. And the problem is one you share with pretty much all hopeful writers. Added to that, the solution is simple: Acquire the skills the pros take for granted. It won’t be a list of, “Do this instead of that,” because it’s a profession, and like every profession, there’s a lot to it. But, a lot of it is having things pointed out that are obvious once they are. And the practice is writing fiction, which is something you already want to do. So it’s more a rite of passage than a disaster.

Not good news after all the work you’ve done, I know. But since we’ll not address a problem we don’t see as being one, knowing that there is a problem, and how to solve it does put you on a more productive, and satisfying course. Once you do master those tricks the act of writing becomes more a high-level version of daydreaming, as you live the protagonist's life, in order to present it as that character perceives it, and get the details right.

The library’s fiction-writing section can be a HUGE resource. Personally? 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 read a few chapters. You’ll be glad you did. Like the proverbial chicken soup for a cold, it might not help, but it sure can’t hurt.

Hang in there and keep on writing.

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

[LJ]

Oh geez. You know so little about me or my work.

[JayG]

• Oh geez. You know so little about me or my work.

No one cares about the author or your resume. It's the reader and what the author's words suggest to THEM, based on their life experience, not your intent.

Had I praised the work you would have accepted it as your due, without question. Yet when it's not praise you blame the one doing the critique.

• i was a staff reporter for about five years.

And you're using the same, nonfiction, author-centric and fact-based approach for fiction. So, it reads like a report. It has to, because the viewpoint is 100% yours. But fiction's methodology is emotion-based and character-centric.

One of the things the student learns early is that on entering any scene, in order to povidr context for the reader, we must address three issues, early: Where we, what's going on, and whose skin d we wear.

But you provide no context. Instead, it's an info-dump of backstory. But it all that data matters so much, open the story there. Entertain the reader, don't educate them on the details of the life of someone who doesn't exist.

[LJ]

i don't know what's wrong with you, but i hope you have a nice day

[JayG]

Easy enough to prove me wrong. Sell it.

You posted your work on a writers venue without a note that said, "praise only." And when someone did praise your other stories you positively glowed in your replies. But when someone took time to point out some thing things you'd learn early in any course in Commercial Fiction Writing—in this case someone who taught writing at workshops, owned a manuscript critiquing service, and is multi-published—your reaction is that there's something wrong with me. Given that so many of your stories have requests for comment, that seems counterproductive. And in any case, you say you're a writing professional. If so, you've seen a LOT worse from your editor.

I checked. You've posted 38 stories, and have a total of 40 comments, many of them from the same people. That lack of response, in and of itself, should tell you that you're not hitting the target. Compare that with me, who you feel unqualified to offer suggestions. The last three stories I posted, alone, had a total of 49 comments. That doesn't make me a brilliant writer. And I make no claims to anything but being knowledgeable on the basics of the profession. My point? If I, who you feel is unqualified to comment on your writing, can achieve that, think of what you could do once you add those same skills to your toolbox.

And in the end, what did I say? That you're missing the target for reasons not based on talent or how well you write. And, I made a suggestion that you look at a few books on technique—even suggested the one that brought me my first sale. Hardly an attack by someone who has something wrong with them

I do have to apologize, though. Normally, I don't do a second critique without it being requested, and I did one on your work some time ago. But I'd not been recording the names of those I critiqued then.

So...you can relax. I've had my say, and will bow out. Just use the x under the critique, and comments, to delete them, and you'll have nothing but praise on the page.