White Light From the Mouth of Infinity

This is the beginnings of a short story/novel that i am trying to write. It is most definitely in the rough stages and some sort of prologue to introduce the characters that i will expand on.

White Light from the Mouth of Infinity

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three doors stand before me.

Other than myself, these doors are the only objects in the room.

The walls, floor and roof are coloured a dark rich red. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the surfaces of this room are not entirely solid, they shimmer and ripple ever so minutely.

The movement and deep red affects me, creating a sense of unease and anxiety. With this also comes a throbbing discomfort behind my eyes. I look away from my red surrounds and back to the doors.

The first door on the left is the most striking. It is made from rose gold, its figure is not flat. Large droplets of gold look to be sliding down the face of the door, but they are not. They are stuck to the surface like wax clinging to the side of a candle. The doorknob too is rose gold, but far more intricate. It is shaped like an open hand, palm facing towards me with fingers slightly curling downwards. I imagine opening this door to be an intimate affair, placing one’s fingers between its, exchanging movement.

The middle door is pitch black. Not painted, but its natural colour and state is black.

In a way, the blackness speaks to me, showing me that it is the complete and true embodiment of darkness. It takes me a moment to realize that the door is heavily concave, the blackness hides the inward dip. The doorknob is cone-like and juts out from the door about six inches into a fierce spike. It is silver, a silver so striking and unblemished it could be mistaken for glass or crystal.

I look back to the centre of the door and feel myself getting lost in the depth of black.

I feel a soft vibration in the back of my skull, it wraps around the entirety of my body.

Engulfing me in a sweet seductive manor, teasing me with new thoughts.

Shadows slowly cloud my vision; all I see is darkness now.

My stomach heaves as I fall to the floor.

With my back to the ground I can feel the floor move beneath me.

A wash of emotion takes hold of me, but it is nothing bad. It is comfort, it is safety, it is reassurance, it is what someone wishes for when they have been abandoned and abused.

This dark and loving state which I have entered is not for me though. As I come to realize this so does whatever was showing me this mindscape. It lets go of me and my vision is restored.

I place one hand on the ground to help push me up, I feel confusion in my hand… It is the texture of the ground that is doing this. It is neither solid nor liquid, my mind cannot fully comprehend the feelings from the ground travelling up my nervous system. This surface is not my flesh or any human flesh to touch.

I pull away, finish standing up and turn towards the last door on the right.

The door is made up of twisted together weaved vines. Some of the vines stick out to flower. The flowers that have bloomed are not a fan of petals as per usual, but are a swirl of metal thorns.

There is nothing special about the doorknob attached to the door. It is just a plain metallic doorknob.

Oddly enough this door is the most inviting in the room.

 

 

 

·        

 

 

 

 How the f**k was this woman hired?

Contemplates Leonard Ronson.

 Maybe it’s because I’m at the arse end of my forties that my tolerance for the useless has been drained. Or, more realistically, she is just useless. F**k, I just want my coffee…

Looking past, the two people in front of him Leonard makes eye contact with the girl trying to tame the espresso machine. She appears tired and stressed.

The girl looks away from Leonards unimpressed and fed up gaze and swallows some saliva, signalling her discomfort.

It takes Leonard a moment to realize that the way he as starring at her was not helping the situation.

 Goddamn, someone save me, and her.

The interior of the café was nothing to be desired. Lining the walls are pictures of E-grade celebrities, awkwardly posing with wide eyed employees. These images have been hastily stuck up with blu-tac, adding to the ‘character’ of the room.

The floor of the whole café is carpeted in a horrendous brown green.

The tables and chairs are set up so close together that it is almost impossible to move without bumping into someone.

This establishment did not deserve the title ‘The Grand Café’.

Leonard found it sad thinking about the old theatre that this building originally was before it was transformed into this depressing hole.

Back when it was just plainly (and rightfully so), ‘The Grand’

He remembered going to the theatre as a boy and all the way up to his early twenties. Walking through the solid metal lined glass doors, into the utterly striking foyer.

Seeing the ticket booth and candy bar next to one another, both with polished dark wooden counters trimmed with gold.

The beautifully rich red carpet beneath one’s feet.

The surrounding walls displaying movies past and present.

But one of the most striking and opulent things in the theatres foyer was the chandelier.

Hanging from the middle of the roof in triumphant glory, crystal shards hanging from silver beam and chain.

Leonard especially loved visiting the theatre at night, just so he could see the chandelier lit up illuminating the foyer. Making this already decadent room more stupendous.

Unfortunately, the owner went bankrupt in ’86.

It was sold and subdivided into a tattoo parlour, clothes store and the ‘Grand Café’. 

F**k this, I’m not waiting in line any longer. I don’t need to waste my time for s****y coffee.

He walks out of the line and pushes the café door open, stepping through as the electronic bell chimes.

The air bites against his face, it was too cold for anyone to be having a good day. Turning left up the street Leonard rummages through his coat pockets looking for a cigarette. He pulls one out with more difficulty than needed, lights it and inhales deeply.

He walks at a heavy pace over the uneven surface of the path, looking around at the town that he called home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

·        

 

 

 

 

 

 

He loved his wife.

But only because he had too.

How could anyone be expected to love someone who was 80% vegetable?

All she could do was mumble incoherently, drool and wave her arm around in an attempt at communicating. Come to think of it, 80% was probably being generous.

The only reason he stayed with her was because he was making a mint off workplace compensation and disability payments.

How could anyone pass up easy money like this?

Not Dulac. A man in his mid-thirties who had not accomplished anything of merit in his time.

He and his wife met whilst he was twenty-four and she nineteen. Both where working at the same stationary store, Dulac was drawn to her simply for the fact that she seemed to think he was attractive. He wasn’t and nothing has changed over the years. Three weeks after meeting one another and chatting during shifts they began dating, two years they were married.

Dulac had never been so unhappy as he was on the day of his wedding. Marrying Dianna was conformation that Dulac would never amount to anything.

On the other hand, the happiest day of his life was when Dianna was injured at work. The office roof collapsed onto her, breaking her spine, causing her brain damage and turning her into a paraplegic.

Dulac was overjoyed when he received the news, he would never have to worry again about making something of himself. All he had to do was pretend to love Dianna (something he was quite talented at) and take care of her in the most minimal way possible.

 

Author's Note

What do you think of the writing, characters and tone? (even though some character introductions are unfinished i would love some feedback.)

Reviews

[JayG]

• Three doors stand before me.
Okay, what’s the question you've raised in s reader's mind with this? Is it:

a) What’s behind the door?

b) Please, give me two standard manuscript pages, 500+ words, on what the doors look like.

Given that at this point I have no idea of where I am, who I am, why I’m there, or what’s going on, my fondest wish isn't to spend the next five minutes learning what the doors look like. In the words of James H. Schmitz, “Don’t inflict the reader with irrelevant background material—get on with the story.”

You’re providing an info-dump of data the reader has not been made to want to know, so you can guess how an acquiring editor would react. Had you provided the reader with context enough to see the value, entertainment-wise in learning it. with a set up that provides it, this could work, though. In other words, make it story, not data

• How the f**k was this woman hired?
Contemplates Leonard Ronson.

Begin with: how is the meaning of the first line changed if you remove “the f**k?” The answer is not at all, so the only thing those words do is slow the narrative and perhaps cause people who see the speaker as crude.

Next: without knowing who is thinking this, why, and about whom, the words have no meaning to a reader. And given that you wrote this for them, that matters.

As we proceed it appears that you’re mentally watching a film and reporting on what you see, so you, the narrator, are talking TO the reader, but in a way only meaningful to someone like yourself who begins reading with the knowledge of where we are, who we are, and what’s going on. Never lose sight of the fact that knowing what can be seen is not the same as seeing it.

“This woman?” Means nothing to the reader who’s met no woman. “Hired?” For what? And is she doing something wrong, or is there something about her that offends this unknown person? No way to tell.

Aside from that, tags belong with the dialog/thought they reference.
- - - - - - -
What you’re doing is telling the reader a story, as if they can both hear you and see the scene—like the director’s commentary track for a film. And that cannot work for several reasons:

First, the reader can neither see nor hear you so while the voice you hear is filled with emotion, the one the reader hears contains only that which the punctuation and the words suggest, based on that reader's reaction to them, not your intended tone.

Our medium doesn’t support either vision or sound, so your facial expressions, body language, and gestures—your performance—is missing. And without that the narrator’s voice is devoid of emotion. Have your computer read it aloud and you’ll hear what a reader gets, and how different that is from what you intended.

A second, and equally important problem is that because you’re telling the story from the outside in, and know all the details and the whys of it, you tend to leave out the things that appear obvious to you, like where they are, why he's complaining, etc. And because you’re focused on the flow of events, you assign the character’s actions and dialog according to the needs of the plot, without ever asking them how they would react, based on their background, personality, and needs. How they view the situation—what matters to them at that moment—matters a great deal. For more on why, this article might help explain why simply describing what can be seen isn’t enough:
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-grumpy-writing-coach-8/

A third reason is that by focusing on visual details you’re informing the reader—explaining the flow of Story, with a deliberate capital S. But story, with a small s isn’t fact-based, it’s emotion-based, and meant to entertain not inform. Your reader isn’t seeking to know what happens, they want to be made to live the story. If this is to be a horror story the goal isn’t to make the reader know that the protagonist feels terror. It’s to terrorize THE READER. It’s to give them a roller-coaster ride, vicariously. Facts are boring, but an emotional experience entertains. Make a reader stop reading and say, “Oh my god, what do we do now?” when the protagonist is in trouble and you have a reader who not only cares, they HAVE to read on.

Problem is, we can’t write like that using either our verbal storytelling skills or the fact-based and nonfiction writing skills we’re given in our school days. Think of how many reports and essays you wrote and how few stories. Total up the time your teachers spend on tag usage, the questions a reader needs to have addressed on entering scene, or handling the black moment, and you’ll see that a LOT was missed. Why? Because they were making us useful to employers by giving us a set of general skills. They no more taught us to be fiction writers than to pilot an airline—though we at least know we need more training to pilot one of those.

So there’s your problem. You have the desire, the story, and the wordsmith skills. What you’re missing is the ways to present a story on the page that will entertain instead of just inform. But the good news is that the local library system’s fiction writing section can help you there, and at quite reasonable cost. In there you’ll find the views of the pros in publishing, writing, and teaching. And given that we know that the advice they give works for them, it stands a good chance of doing so for us.

As always, my personal suggestion is to look for the names Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon on the cover. They focus on the nuts-and-bolts issues of constructing scenes and linking them to form a successful narrative. They don’t claim to make you a professional, that’s your job. They will, though, give you the tools and professional knowledge with which to do that if it’s in you. And that’s the best we can hope for. As a kind of preview, you might poke around in the writing articles in my blog. They’re based on the teaching you’ll find in those books.

Not the good news you hoped for, I know. But still, if you write a little better each day, and live long enough…

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

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