Chapter 1 Preview

The Warriors no one knows

September 11, 2014.

Harder. One fist cracked right into the tree, my hand tingling with pain. Harder. The other fist slammed right into the bark, with my hand receiving shocks of immense pain by the brute force of the collision. Harder. Twisting my feet, and sending a kick down low into the roots of the tree sinking into the grass, with chunks and snippets of the tree snapping and cracking off. Harder. My body, weighing almost as if I was carrying three stacks of bricks strapped to my back and chest, I wheezed and puffed as much air into my lungs as quickly as I could. Harder. Sending one more kick off my other foot, plunging into the tree, my leg pulsed with pain.

Strength. All I need is strength. My heart was throbbing like it was going out of business. With both of my hands rattling like guitar strings, I was at that place again. I’ve reached my limit. Finally! Excited, yet still sucking in wind, I could barely stand. My knees were beginning to buckle, with the remaining energy left to stand was draining out fast. I couldn’t focus on the negatives if I still wanted to continue. I have to focus on my spirit, even when my body is weak.

Pausing to relax for a moment, listening to the sounds of birds joyfully singing, bugs busily buzzing, and the trace of the wind bristling leaves on the trees.  It was just another day here in the Param forest, the sky didn’t have a single cloud swimming about, and the sun was out and sparkling. The scene here was like a book cover painting, the way everything blended in with so many different colors. With the leaves still shining a lively green, it would appear there was still a lot of summer left before fall came. With the remaining trees that still had branches (many had been completely trashed by training), they appeared more luscious than last year. A good sign that we’d had a great spring.

Every day for the last three years, I’ve come out to this place. It’s like a getaway spot, while your family goes to the Bahamas with all the fancy hotels, and tourist attractions, I prefer trees rather than buildings, and bugs rather than crowds.  While other kids would rather have the latest technology, I’d rather be outside in nature, doing what was natural for me.

What was unnatural for me was how fast I had reached my limit today. All my body wanted to do was to sit down and relax, but that’s when the real training begins. When you ache all over  in places you didn’t know you had and you wished you didn’t know. Clear beads of slimy sweat rolled off the humped tip of my nose and dripped into the dirt. My old torn and worn navy blue Berachi shirt had practically turned to black. I could feel how it tightly grasped my body, and the interesting curves, and deformed letters of the tribal signs sank deep sleeves. The tribal signs on the sleeves were vintage, and when you looked at them at any store, you always felt special. The designers of Berachi made it that way, with each piece of clothing would get you to feel some kind of emotion and an urge to buy the shirt.

I could barely keep an eye open, but I didn’t need to see to train. I have done this more times than not. I didn’t need to see.. Striking a punch in the air, whipping it as fast as wind, then tossing a kick as high as I could throw it. My body burning while pivoting in all directions, as I continued to throw dashing strikes in the air. Unable to hold in the fatigue, I couldn’t help but yelp in wallowing pain.. I can still go! I won’t….give up! Closing my one good eye, while just listening to the sound of my breath, slowing the pace of my panting.. With a cautious hand, I lifting one leg completely up, then placing my foot on the side of my knee, while stretching out my arms like wings, relaxing my stance, while merely standing on a buckling leg. I only need my spirit. As long as there’s a breathe in me, I’ll keep going! Leaping off the buckling leg up into the air, both legs stinging as hot as a fire iron, my other leg crash landed into the ground, with a repulse of searing pain tingling up my spine. Locking my sight on a nearby tree, my ankles felt like twigs, seemingly snapping with every stride I took. I jumped as high as I could before running into the tree, slightly bending my back so it slightly faced the ground and my chest faced higher up into the tree. Without another thought, with one foot bumping into the trunk of the tree, my entire body tensed up while my knee slightly bent on the landing, and it felt like I weighed a full ton, inch by every inch my knee bent..

Crunch!  The other foot smacked into the trunk, sinking into its hard bark and with a quick step I placed another foot onto the tree.

(Stopped editing on 4/8/18)I began running up the tree with all of my might, but with every step my heart seemed to climb up my chest and into my throat. I’m so close! With one final leap, I flew towards the first branch of the tree, and let one more battle cry soar out of my throat, swinging my right leg at the branch with all the strength I had left. Snap! The branch fell off the tree and spiraled to the ground. My body burned with pain, I was finished, yet it wasn’t over. I was quickly falling to the ground, and I had to think fast. With every fiber in my being, I pivoted my legs one final time and landed on the ground onto a large pile of branches. I quickly fell back, my spine striking hard against the trunk and slid onto the ground. I did it….I did it! I looked over at my handiwork to the five other trees I had completely knocked off all of their branches. I smiled wryly at the hard work I had put forth. The only cost was, if it was possible, I could feel my heart in the brink of my mouth, but it was worth it. With one last glance at my newest tree I had completely vanquished with only its trunk remaining untouched, I took one more look around at the other seven I had done, and the fifteen rocks I had split.  Seven centurion trees, and fifteen rocks twice the size of my hand. Good work. All I could do was smile, not because it was harder to frown with all the exhaustion my body was put through. I was happily in pain, I had once again proved to myself I can go beyond my capabilities. Yet at the same time, I hadn’t gotten to my goal just yet. Today was a step closer and tomorrow I’ll go even further. I wasn’t going to stop until I bursted through my limits and tap into that power. A power that has only shown itself only three times. The red vision….the white hot energy….what could it be?

Author's Note

What can be improved? What did you like? Could you feel where you were? Could you see what I'm trying to get you to see? I'm open for criticism

Reviews

[JayG]

Well, you did ask for comment, so…

• Harder. One fist cracked right into the tree, my hand tingling with pain. Harder.

When you read this, in your mind the first word is barked, sharply. That’s because it’s how you intend the word to sound in the reader’s mind. And that emphasis will repeat each time it’s spoken, acting as an exclamation point, as you go line to line. In fact, I’d guess that each repetition should become stronger and more emotion filled. If only the reader knew that.

Unfortunately, the reader comes to the story not knowing where we are in time and space. They don’t know who is speaking this word, or why. So how do they perceive the word? In a monotone. So, from the first word you and the reader are on diverging paths.

When you say, “One fist cracked right into the tree,” the reader has no clue as to if it was meant to hit someone and missed, or deliberate, or if it’s against our protagonist or by him/her. That you clarify later in the same sentence matters little, because you cannot retroactively remove confusion, or fix a bad first impression.

And as a minor point, were you telling this aloud the word “right” would be emphasized, and amplify how the strike was made. But in print? It has no more emphasis than any other word, and so serves no purpose but to make the sentence take a bit longer to read.

In the end, the entire chapter is spent detailing the moves that someone we know damn little about makes while training for a martial art of unknown kind. Why are they doing it? Dunno. Where do they live? Dunno, the name Param doesn’t get a response on Google. Their name? Unknown. Their gender? Unknown. How old are they? Can’t tell. Who are they trying to gain skill for? Not mentioned.

And the most important point: Why should we care that someone unknown, in an unknown place, is working on toughing themselves for an unknown reason?

Why that matters is this:

“A novel is like a car—it won’t go anywhere until you turn on the engine. The “engine” of both fiction and nonfiction is the point at which the reader makes the decision not to put the book down. The engine should start in the first three pages, the closer to the top of page one the better.”
~ Sol Stein

Why does that matter? Because that chapter, at 1232 words places the reader on page six of a standard manuscript page. And where in the five pages of punches and kicks they read do you think the reader had the urge to sit back and say, “Tell me more?”

Here’s the problem, and it’s one you share with a LOT of other hopeful writers. You’re trying to use the skill-set of verbal storytelling in a medium that doesn’t support them.

When you tell a story, HOW you tell that story—your performance—counts every bit as much as what you say. You visually punctuate with gesture. You lean toward the audience to emphasize a point. You look down, shaking your head to show a mood, and avoid eyes of the audience to make a point. Does any of that make it to the page? No.

Your golden voice soars and whispers. You take meaningful pauses for breath, and change timbre and cadence, all in service to the tale being told. Does any of that make it to the page? Again, no.

Sure, for you, who can hear and visualize your performance it works. For you each line acts to a pointer to images, situations, and memories, all living in your head. And it does that pointing not after it’s read, but before. But what about the reader? For them, each line acts to a pointer to images, situations, and memories, all living in YOUR head.

Doesn’t it make sense to either point to things you know can be found in your reader’s head, or place them there? In short, if we hope to please a reader who is used to professionally written stories, doesn’t it seem a good idea to know what the pros know?

The thing no one tells us in our school years is that they’re giving us skills that will help us make a living. And what do our future employers need so far as writing skills? The ability to write reports, essays, papers, and letters. So guess what we write mostly in school? See the problem? Employers want writing that informs, so we learn fact-based and author-centric writing skills. We TELL the reader our information. But we read fiction for entertainment, which is an emotional goal, right? We care more about an event’s impact on the character, and what it makes them do than the fact of it happening. And to provide that—to entertain—we need a writing style that’s emotion-based and character-centric. Problem is, not only don’t we learn it, we don’t know we should.

Make sense? If so, you can see that, no way in hell can we use our schooldays nonfiction writing skills for writing fiction—though pretty much everyone, myself included—tries to use them because it’s not only the only writing skill we own, we’re not aware that there IS another approach.

In short, it’s not your fault. But the result is that you’ve been working vary hard on writing this story. And that’s what we need to work on. It’s not a matter of talent of skill, or even about the story. As my favorite Mark Twain quote says, “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.”

Good news. No. What you hoped to hear? Hell no. But since you share the problem with most hopeful writers, it’s a problem to fix—that can be fixed—and not a big deal. And, the solution is simplicity itself: Since you’re missing the tricks of the trade, add them to your present writing skills. You learned nonfiction writing, so you’re obviously capable of adding another. And since you’ve already mastered things like grammar and expression/description, it won’t take the twelve years our schooldays took to get us where we are.

I won’t sugar-coat it, though. It is a simple solution, though not an easy one. Your present writing skills are so ingrained that they feel intuitive, and it’s easy to forget how hard we worked to learn and master them. So those skills are going to howl in outrage when you try to use a method that will, at first, feel unnatural. Shutting them up is really hard. But once you have mastered the tricks you’ll wonder why you didn’t see it for yourself. And the difference in a reader’s perception of your writing will amaze you.

So where do you find those magic tricks? One excellent resource is your local library’s fiction writing section. There, you’ll find the views of successful writers, publishing pros, and noted teachers.

My personal suggestion is to pick up a personal copy of one of two books. The best is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It is a university level book, though, and can at times be a dry read. Still, it’s the best, and most of the articles in my writing blog are based on that book. They’re meant as a sort of overview of the issues fiction writers need to handle.

Another, that’s an easier read, is Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, available for download at any online bookseller, and in hard copy on Deb’s website.

Either should be read slowly, with lots of time for thinking about the points raised, and practicing them.

But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

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