Ellie and Devin

What would you do if you met someone you had known for years, but they barely knew you?

Ellie taps her pencil against the clipboard in her hand. Recently she's been unable to think of anything except this one question. She's given in now. It's time to ask the opinions of her colleagues.

Walking outside of the college, she sees several people she recognizes, but feels no urge to speak to them. In all likelihood, they won't know her name. Even if they do, she doesn't know theirs. It'd end poorly one way or another.

She listens closely to people as they pass.

The world has been peaceful recently.

Too peaceful.

It grates on the voices in the streets, making both the poor and rich walk with urgency. The women in cafes have been speaking in quiet and modded tones as of late, and men grow louder and angrier in bars. It feels like something is stirring, but it's not easy to pin down. No one is talking about it. Whatever it is.

That's what she's trying to figure out. The clipboard in her hands is the accumulation of her research into this newfound problem.

It isn't for several minutes that she finds someone to approach. A man with dark brown hair and a cheap black coat faces away from her, tossing a stone in his hand. The field that separates them is full of fresh green grass, telling of the recent spring rains they've experienced as of late.

She approaches Devin.

Devin is someone she's been tentative friends with since she started at the college. They've been growing closer recently, so it won't be too uncomfortable to ask him. Though, she doesn't have high hopes for his response. Devin isn't the most intuitive, even if he's a great tactician.

Honestly, she isn't going to him for his expertise at all- not that she would ever tell him that. Or anyone, for that matter. She wants to ask him because she knows him. Like practice.

He's standing over the edge of a pond, peering into the murky depths.

"Devin." She calls.

He turns around, and she's about to initiate a conversation when the dirt under his foot gives out.

She watches, stunned, as Devin falls backwards into the water, yellow eyes widening like plates for a moment before going under. She laughs unexpectedly before covering her mouth and straining to keep a grin down. It isn't easy, so she turns her head away.

It's only when she's gotten herself under control that she looks back.

He comes back out of the water, gasping and panting. He looks more distressed than she expected, considering how many times his friends have knocked him into the water. It's easy to dismiss, though.

He sweeps his wet brown locks out of his face, rubbing his eyes, when she calls his name again.

"Devin?"

He flinches and looks at her with a spray of water from his hair. His pupils expand and shake when they meet hers, while his mouth opens in shock.

The water must be cold.

Crouching, she extends a hand to him.

Normally she would analyze his every move and expression, but her mind falls back to that question. Maybe Devin is being affected by it too? Should she even ask him at all?

"... Ellie?"

She frowns. What's with this sudden nickname? Devin doesn't reach for her hand. Thinking he forgot about it, she leans forward, knee touching the soft ground.

The dirt shifts under foot and her chest goes cold with dread as her stomach drops.

"Ellie-!" Devin shouts as she falls.

The water is shockingly cold and she becomes drenched immediately, her dress weighing heavily in the water. She clasps a hand over her mouth and nose instinctually. Her brothers would push her into the water when they lived north. Habits don't go easily, but the dress is impossible to swim in, and she can only sink.

Even when she goes under, her thoughts wander to the clipboard.

Ah, it's going to be soaked.

Something grabs her shoulders and she is yanked above the surface.

"Ellie!" Devin shouts in panic. He swims toward the waters edge, and Ellie accepts the situation with a calm heart. The cold water forces her out of her thoughts, and she can finally look at Devin with a clearer mind.

It'd be a lie to say she isn't a little irritated. All he has said so far is her name. No, not even her name. A nickname that she hasn't given him. He's freaked out over a refreshing dunk in the water, ignored her helping hand, and become dramatically concerned over an acquaintance.

She pulls up the clipboard from under the water. The ink smears and blends together over pages in the assortment of colors she used to make the information easy to comprehend at first glance. It took an hour to compose and two to write. With her workload recently, those weren't easy to give up out of her day.

She sweeps the wet hair strands off of her face, trusting Devin to not let go.

"Ellie? What- no, how are you here? I'm, you were-" Devin stops in his tracks at the college behind them. "... Saintsford?"

"What do you mean, 'how are you here'?" She asks. "I didn't drop out, if that's what you're asking," Ellie replies, a trace of bitterness in her response. "It's only been four months since I got in."

Devin looks at her, his wandering gaze finding a home in her eyes. There's an expression she has never seen on him before, but she can't pin down what it is.

Something clicks, and he rushes to grab her hands.

"Four months? Really?"

"-yeah?" She looks at his hands grabbing hers. Oddly, she isn't inclined to remove them. The sensation makes her uncomfortable, but she doesn't take them back.

"Haha!" He laughs and grins. He brings his forehead down to their joined hands to hide an elated smile-

And that smile makes it impossible to pull away.

The clipboard slips out of her fingers that she had crimped in order to hold on, falling into the water with a bloop. Staring at Devin, she dismisses it. The paper was ruined already, ink illegible, so everything needs to be rewritten.

"You're... odd today, Devin." She comments, monotone. Maybe the dean is giving him a hard time. It wouldn't really explain all of that, but it's a start.

"... Odd," Devin breathes. "Yeah, I'm a bit odd right now. So first, we should get out of the water."

It takes a few minutes to struggle out of the pond, especially with her waterlogged dress, and they're both left sitting on the dirt, panting and tired.

"Hah, god, why do women wear dresses," Ellie bemoans. This is so inefficient. The fabric is already water logged and heavy.

Devin laughs warmly. "Then why are you wearing one?" He falls on his back in the grass, looking up. The sun is still rising in the sky, so it isn't above him, but the heat of its rays still warms the cool breeze of late morning. There aren't any clouds either, meaning the heat bears down on them wholeheartedly. Drenched as they are, however, the heat is welcomed.

"Society," she replies blandly.

"Ugh," Devin groans. "Society." Despite complaining, his face is absolutely beaming. If he were to burst into laughter in the next minute, Ellie wouldn't even be surprised. It's like his birthday came early. "Hey, Ellie."

"Yeah?" That nickname again.

"I'm happy you're here. Really." Devin grins.

"... Do you need to see a doctor?" He laughs. She can only stare at him, laying on the grass in a wet suit, laughing, and question his sanity. "... They say people change right before they die. You didn't get diagnosed with an incurable disease, did you?"

The sun gleams inside his golden eyes, highlighting them as he curves his eyes toward her. He props himself on his elbows, staring directly at her.

"What are you talking about Ellie? I'm fine. I just didn't think I'd see you here- you scared the hell out of me."

"Sure..." Ellie glares at him, propping her chin on her fist, resting her elbow on her bent knee. Devin smiles brightly under her scrutiny, making her feel oddly comfortable with the idea of continuing to banter with him. She hesitates, but the words leave her mouth before she can go back on them. "So you wouldn't mind if I dragged you to the nurses office?"

A strange expression passes over his face for a moment, before disappearing. He sits up, brushes the wet hair off his forehead, and asks while smiling.

"Will you? Take me, I mean?"

"... I wouldn't say it if I didn't intend to follow through," though she thought he'd resist for a while longer before they both went their separate ways. She's nothing if not a woman of her word, however. "But I'm not walking there in this dress. I'm going to wash and change first, so you should too."

"Of course. Should we meet back up in an hour?"

An hour... She nods. "Okay."

"Should I escort you to your room?" He stands up and extends his hand. Ellie takes it comfortably and rises onto her heels. If it weren't for the strap on her ankles, she likely would've lost them to the lake.

The dress is still sopping with water, so she retrieves her hand from his and squeezes as much as she can from the fabric. "Normally I'd refuse, but I think I'll have to burden you and accept." The stares will be awful. Having someone by her side will make it tolerable.

"It's no burden, not at all." Devin moves to stand by her side. He waits patiently for her to wrinkle her dress into an appropriate level of dryness, continuing to smile like a saint even when it takes several minutes.

"Thank you."

"Of course, Ellie." He offers his hand again, so she takes it. It feels uncomfortable, like wearing shoes that don't fit, but Devin appears right at home.

Walking over the grass with him she finds herself thankful for his escort, as her shoes dig into the back of her feet painfully from the uneven ground. It's worse because her feet are wet and shoes waterlogged. Just the confidence that she won't fall if she loses her balance from her heels is enough to ease her mind as she walks.

"Devin."

"Yes?"

"Did I ever give you permission to call me by a nickname?"

Author's Note

How is it? Have you picked up the hints about Devin? I thought they were almost too heavy handed. I also want to know if they act like friends. Writing is hard. This isn't the whole thing, I was worried it was too long to post on this site. I might post the other half later.

Reviews

[skibidivan]

PLEASE POST THE OTHER HALF IM SO INVESTED RN 🙏🙏 Im not sure if i got it true but i think Devin might be from the future??? And in the past ellie and him used to be so close but then something happened and they seperated. I dont know 😞

[Rustling Leaves]

Yes!!! Super close actually. They separated due to Ellie dying in the future. I'll post the second half once I finish it- it's still a little incomplete, which is also why I didn't post it.

[JayG]

Well, you did ask for advice on how to improve. So...

The problem you face is that you, like most hopeful writers, have fallen into the most common trap in fiction. It’s so common that I call it, The Great Misunderstanding.

Simply put, we assume that writing-is-writing and because we spent more than a decade in school, creating the reports and essays that formed the bulk of our writing assignments, we have that part under control. So,we need only a good plot, a knack for storytelling, and a bit of luck.

If only... What we forget is that the goal of the writing we were assigned in school was to inform the reader, clearly and concisely. So, it deals in fact. But fiction’s goal? To entertain, which is an emotional goal. Readers want to form an empathetic connection with the protagonist. They want you to make them care by making the story seem to be happening to THEM, and in real-time, not overview, and not explained, secondhand, by a narrator we can neither see nor hear.

We forget that only the author knows the emotion to place in the reading, and so, tend to transcribe ourselves telling the story as if to an audience. We forget that only we know the elements of the storyteller’s performance, like the gestures; the body language; the expression changes, and more. So as we read our own writing, because it works as it should, we forget that unlike the reader, we begin reading with context; with backstory; with knowledge of where and when we are; and what’s ABOUT to happen.

Instead of being the all-knowing author, look at the opening as a reader, who has only the context the words supply:

• Ellie taps her pencil against the clipboard in her hand.

So Ellie, who could be 7 or 70, on the job, doing homework, thinking about music, or a million other things, taps a pencil for unknown reasons. So unless we know where we are and what motivated her to do that, it’s meaningless as it's read. For you, of course, the line calls up the image of her, in context.

• Recently she's been unable to think of anything except this one question.

“This” one question? You know what it is. She knows what it is. Shouldn’t the one you wrote it for know? How can this have meaning for the reader if we don’t have a glimmer of what in the pluperfect hells is going on?

As Kurt Vonnegut puts it:
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Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
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Add to that, the words an adventure magazine editor gave Dwight Swain:
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“Don’t give the reader a chance to breathe. Keep him on the edge of his God-damned chair all the way through! To hell with clues and smart dialog, and characterization. Don’t worry about corn. Give me pace and bang-bang. Make me breathless!”
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• She's given in now.

Given in to what? When is “now?” Where are we? What’s going on? Get yourself offstage and into the prompter's booth. This is her story, so let her live it. Every time you, someone not on the scene of in the story talk TO the reader is a rejection point,

Words we have, but those words are meaningless to the reader, as they're read, because you’ve supplied no context. And you cannot retroactively remove a reader's confusion. So were this a submission to an agent, the rejection would have already come, though when you read it, it’s clear as to what’s going on.

Bottom line: All your life you’ve been choosing fiction written with the skills of the Commercial Fiction Writing profession. You see none of the tools in use because as always, art conceals art. But you do see, and expect to see, the result of using them. More to the point, YOUR reader expects that in your writing. There's no way around that, and no shortcuts but to not waste time looking for one.

To write fiction you need the skills that the pros take for granted. And what you may have learned in a semester of creative writing is nowhere near what you need.

So, if writing fiction is your goal, and I fully support that, you need to acquire those skills.

The school library probably has a copy of Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. If not, you can download one here:
https://dokumen.pub/techniques-of-the-selling-writer-0806111917.html

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.

And for what it may be worth as an overview of the traps and gotchas, my articles and YouTube videos were created for that.

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

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

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“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.”
~ Mark Twain

[Rustling Leaves]

Thank you so much!!! I needed this, absolutely. I've been stuck when it comes to writing recently. Exactly because of what you said- I haven't gotten out of my view of the story as an author. I have been using this site to post old and new writing in hopes I could receive advice and incite- so thank you!! And to my own credit, I've never actually taken a class on writing outside of basic core credit English in grade school- which, as long as you can form basic sentences, you pass. Mostly I've gotten by via reading and writing independently. I will take your advice to heart! I downloaded the book you linked and once college exam week is over I'll read it and hopefully use it to improve. I will also watch and read your stuff!! I'm sorry for going on so long. Thank you, and I love the quotes you added!