Beginning of Chapter One

About to descend the last step of the first floor in the house Juliette froze, one foot still raised, eyes fixed on the brilliantly white envelope, adorned with her name written in elegant gold script leaning against the front door. There it was just lying on the doormat, fastened with the chancellor's family crest, a pair of angel wings and a Tatama, the angelic symbol meaning Order out of Chaos

 

Deliberately, she planted both feet firmly on the ground and drew out a breath to calm her rolling emotions. In the excitement of this day, and the preperations for her and her brother's seventeenth birthday, she'd forgotten. Today was much more than just a celebration of her reaching a milestone in years. Today she learned if her application for the Guardian Angel Training Programme had been accepted.

 

For a long moment she stood, unable to force herself to reach for it. But in the end, dithering changed nothing. She either was, or was not going to become a Guardian Angel, and staring at the envelope wouldn't change what was inside. So with a mutter of, 'Okay Julie, lets get this over with,' she choked back her unease and tore at the envelope with her pinkie finger before unfolding the glossy council standard paper and began to read her fate.

 

Dear Miss Samson,

 

Thank you for your application to Caelum Academy's Guardian Training Programme, after much reviewing of your performance at our Academy the Caelum Council of Angels has decided to offer you a place in the programme. When you return to the academy in three weeks time for another exciting year of education, you will notice that your timetable has changed to suit the needs of your training. We know that you will be a delight like your brother and parents, showing true potential and hard work; however, due to your previous behaviour at the Academy you shall be put on term time probhation as we are willing to look past yor old mistakes and if you have a clean record for this term, there will be no risk of being sentenced to becoming a Fallen, if you really want to be a Guardian then I am certain you will return to the Academy wiser and less rebellious than previous years. Do not disappoint me, Miss Samson. As you know, the next few years leading to graduation will be challenging and exhausting but we believe that you have what it takes. I look forward to seeing you during your first field experiment test at the end of the first academic month.

 

We are the Order out of Chaos.

 

Yours most sincerely, Chancellor Atarah of Caelum.

 

Chancellor Atarar, leader of the Light Angels, she was strict and pompous in Juliette's opinion, but that was what made her such a good leader. As for the past mistakes bit...that was more complicated. It wasn't always Juliette's fault, sometimes she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, nevertheless she always had a tendency to get into trouble and now the Chancellor had resulted to threatening to strip her of her Angel privelages, basically meaning Juliette would be kicked out of Caelum and become a Fallen Angel. Juliette would rather die by a Pegusi stampede than ever let that happen.

 

She simply rolled her eyes and placed the letter back on the oak table, this wasn't the first time that Chancellor Atarah had wanted to get rid of her and it probably wouldn't be the last. Though she never thought that Atarah would actually put her on prohbation. Nethertheless Juliette wasn't ever going to let the chancellor bring her down; she was going to celebrate her 17th birthday the right way, and that meant spending the morning getting breakfast with her best friend.

 

 

Alice Despina was probably the most confident, feisty and sarcastic girl in all of Caelum, which was why the two got along so well. They have been best friends for years ever since they were paired for a project at the academy and accidentally set the teachers desk on fire, to be fair they'd only just started learning to control their powers-powers Juliette still had no idea how to use.

 

By the time Juliette reached their favourite cafe, the preppy hispanic girl was already sitting in a booth by the window, her auburn hair covering half of her face as she sketched absent-mindedly in her sketchbook- she never left home without it. Juliette grinned and slid into the booth opposite her, setting her bag down beside her. 'So, what cheesy message did Chancellor Atarah put in your training acceptance letter?' Alice also wanted to be a guardian, though she was a lot more responsible than Juliette would ever be, and probably got a nicer message.

 

The brown-eyed girl smirked and pulled her letter out of her rucksack, handing it over, she cleared her throat and did her best imitation of Atarah. 'I am so pleased with your progress throughout the years, and glad you have decided to join Caelum's Guardian Training Programme, although I'm sure you will understand that you will have to work with students other than Miss Samson this year.' The girl scoffed and went back to speaking normally. 'She treats us like kids, like she believes we think we're the only ones in those classes. If they don't want us working together then put us in seperate classes, it's not that hard. Is it me or does that woman really hate you?'

 

Alice had a point, Atarah practically adored Owen, Dylan and Alice but she'd always seemed a little extra cold towards Juliette, but that must be due to the amount of trouble she had caused previously. Why else would the Chancellor dislike her so much?

 

Juliette simply chuckled and handed the letter back. 'Yeah well that's Atarah for you, but we do have to focus this year. I don't just want to be a guardian, I want to be the best, better than Dylan and my parents.' David and Kaci Samson, the most well-known Guardian Angels in all of Caelum, although now they only worked part time and focused more on being good parents. The Samson family had always had a pristne reputation, they played by the rules and lived to make very promising futures for themselves.

Alice shrugged. 'At least you've got it easy. Mum wants me to have a second baptism once I graduate, and I have to attend every church session. Not to mention that I also have to help out at the sunday school.' She huffed in annoyance, clearly she disliked that idea. Alice's mother was an extremely religious catholic who was all for her daughter becoming a guardian, so much that she literally makes her read the Angel's Codex over and over again and sleep under a huge painting of the Angel Gabriel. Alice, on the other hand, couldn't stand any of that stuff and was always trying to desuade her mother's crazy ideas.

 

Juliette chuckled lightly and stood up. 'Better get reading that codex then, Aliciana. I'll go get the drinks. One iced skinny medium sized caramel latte coming right up.' Alice had always loved the most complicated drinks, it annoyed the hell out of Mrs Despina. It was sad to think that one day they would be too preoccupied to have their daily caffeine fix and gossip for hours about any random nonsense they could come up with. That was just the Guardian lifestyle.

 

Juliette ordered Alice's ridiculous drink and a simple iced coffee for herself then carried the beverages back to the table where Alice had discarded her sketchbook and was now checking the academy's chat page. After hearing the tray being placed on the table, Alice glanced up. "So the annual Caelum End of Summer party is tonight. Dylan will be there with his friend right? And he dumped that stupid wannabe girl?" There it is, that girl couldn't be any less subtle. Dylan, two years older than Owen and I, yet possibly the most immature. Her brother was not a player... just a little hopeless in the romance department and given the curse of being labelled as 'the hot one' which Juliette personally thought was a load of rubbish. Then there was Owen, Juliette's literal other half, her numero uno and also the biggest dork in history. You know those adorable guys with the baby face whose basically a big softie? Yeah that was her brother. The only girl he ever kissed was aunt Carrie and he probably didn't enjoy it one bit. That the Samson family, rebels, heartthrobs and dorks; but they all shared one important quality- passion. It was passion that led to the Samsons doing great things whether it was being an honourary Guardian or being a respectful member of the CCA. Passion that was going to lead to Juliette not only achieving her dreams, but becoming a legend.

 

 

Author's Note

What do you think so far?

Reviews

[JayG]

• There it was, just lying on the doormat. A white envelope embellished with gold.

This is one sentence with a comma or colon. Phrased as it is, the second line is a sentence fragment because it has no subject. It works in speech, but…

• Today WASN’T just Juliette's birthday, it was the day she RECEIVES her letter from Caelum Academy about starting her training to become a Guardian Angel,

Pick a tense and stick with it.

• You see, Juliette is most definitely not your normal teenage girl, she's an angel,

Here’s where you hate me:

From start to finish, this is a transcription of you telling an audience a story. But storytelling is a performance art. HOW you tell a story matters just as much as what you say, because the emotional part of the story—the part the reader comes for, comes through things like tone, intensity, cadence, significant pauses for breath, and all the vocal tricks of the storyteller’s art.

You hear all that when you read/edit so it works. But how much of it makes it to the page? Not a trace. The reader “hears” a monotone, modified only by punctuation and any emotion inherent to a give word—as suggested by the READER’S background and understanding, not yours.

Have your computer, or a friend read it aloud and you’ll hear what a reader gets as they read.

Added to that, your performance includes gestures that visually punctuate. It includes body language, and the facial expressions you use to illustrate emotion.

Guess how much of that makes it past the keyboard?

See the problem? It’s not a matter of talent and potential. It has nothing to do with good or bad writing, or even the story. It’s that this was written with a methodology inappropriate to the medium.

But put that aside for as moment and think about your reader’s expectations. Are they interested in the facts of the story—the events? No, because that’s a report. In a love story, do we want to learn that a character is in love, or does the reader want to be made to fall in love? Are we entertained by knowing a character is frightened, or by becoming afraid to turn off the lights?

One is an informational experience the other emotional. Which one entertains? That matters because the reason we read fiction is to be entertained.

Not good news, given how hard you’ve worked on this. But you have a lot of company, because roughly half of hopeful writers do the same. The rest write it like a chronicle of events.

Why? Because in our school days we never catch the significance of the fact that we write endless numbers of essays and reports and damn few stories, as they train us to be useful to an employer. And no one tells us that, like any other, we learn the tricks of the fiction writing trade after we graduate high school. So our classmates can’t tell us, and our teachers, who learned their writing skills in the same school system, literally aren’t aware of the problem, and think writing is writing, and they’re giving you what you need for any usage. So we all graduate high school exactly as well qualified to write fiction as to pilot a 747 aircraft. The only difference is that we graduate knowing we’re not commercial pilots.

But the good news is that it’s fixable if you add the tricks of the fiction writing trade. Simple, right? Unfortunately, while it is, it’s not easy, because you have to not only learn a very different way of presenting a story—emotion-based and character-centric as against fact-based and author-centric—you have to practice it till it’s as automatic as your present writing skills, acquired and honed over twelve years of school, and after.

But, it does make sense that if you want to write like a pro you need to know what the pro knows. So some time and a few dollars invested on your writers education makes sense, too.

And the good news is that what you need is as close as he local library system’s fiction writing section. There you’ll find the professional views of successful writers, teachers, and publishing pros. If you can find a book on writing by Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon, snatch it up because it’s gold.

You might also want to poke around in the writing articles in my blog. They’re written with the hopeful writer in mind.

I wish I had better news, and that there was a more gentle way of breaking such news. Having been there I know how much it can hurt. But it is something we all face on the way to publication, so it’s really no big deal.

So hang in there, and keep on writing.

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

[Shannon.R]

Thank you so much, I'll get to fixing this right away.

[Shannon.R]

Also if you wanted to take one of my paragraphs and use those writing tips you spoke about that would be a really helpful example for me.

[JayG]

As for changing a paragraph it's a lot more than that. Problem is, it's not a matter of rephrasing. The methodology you're using is based on an author telling the reader a story, as a parent tells a bedtime story to a child. But for that to work, the kid must see and hear the adult, because they illustrate the emotional part of the story through performance. But that can't work if the reader can't hear or see you, and has only what the words suggest to THEM, based on THEIR background, which won't match yours.

The first paragraph, for example has the narrator saying, "There it was just lying on the doormat;"

So before anyone in the story see and knows what's going on, and to whom, you, someone they can neither see nor hear are talking about an unknown "it."

In the real world, and as she sees her world, she has to see the envelope and THEN react to it. So this is you talking about something unknown. You know what it is, but for the reader it's data that has no meaning. Doesn't it make sense for her to see the thing and know what it is before you talk about it? For example:
- - - - -
About to enter the house Juliette stopped,one foot still raised to take a step, eyes fixed on the brilliantly white envelope, adorned with her name written in gold script that leaned against the door.

Deliberately, she lowered her foot and blew out a breath to calm her roiling emotions. In the excitement of this day, and the preparations for her sixteenth birthday party she'd forgotten. Today was more than just a celebration of her reaching a milestone in years. Today she learned if her application for Guardian Angel training had been accepted.

For a long moment she stood, unable to force herself to reach for it. But in the end, dithering changed nothing. She either was, or was not going to Caelum Academy, and staring at the envelope wouldn't change what was inside. So with a mutter of, "Okay, Julie, let's get it over with," she...
- - - - - -
Look at the difference:

First, it's her doing things, not you talking. We know what has her attention and how it motivates her to react, which tells us about her and how she thinks. No one is explaining anything in overview. Instead, we're in real-time, as SHE views it.

We learn where she is. We learn that it's her birthday and that she's going to have a party. We learn that the envelope is on the step and what it contains. We learn what it means and where she'll go to school if the answer is yes. And, we learn a bit about the kind of person she is through her reaction. In other words instead of telling the reader what happens, I showed them her world as she views it. So now, the reader knows how important it is to her, and wants to know what it says, too, because of how it will effect her, not as data to be absorbed. In other words, it's a hook.

We don't learn about her family because it matters not at all to HER at the moment. Her mother, on learning the news will probably mention her carrying on the family tradition, so why slow the story for an unnecessary history lesson? The same applies to the other things I left out.

This is her story, and fair is fair. Instead of you hogging the stage, let the poor girl live it.

So here's the deal. No way in hell are a few examples are going to fix the problem, because I constructed that example using more than just a one technique. For example, I answered the three questions a reader needs to have addressed quickly. I placed the reader into her POV and made use of M/R units. And each of those take more than a paragraph to define because you not only need to know what's needed, you have to have a full understanding of why it's necessary, and what the options and alternatives are.

In short, you need the craft of the writer. No getting around that. So, the sooner you get started, the sooner you can bridle and mount Pegasus, and have your writing take flight.

It's not easy. If it was, we'd all be selling our work. But if you are meant to be a writer you'll find the learning fascinating. And you'll love the result.

[Carol Cashes]

I hope that JayG's review hasn't discouraged you. His review reads like self-promotion and the superior attitude evident in his "lecture" comes through loud and clear.

Your profile indicates you are a young writer and as such, should be encouraged, not lectured or told that you have to spend money to be better at your chosen craft. You made a good start joining this site, and there are many, many talented writers that can assist you in your endeavors without making you feel inadequate. In fact, it's been my experience that the majority of writers on WritersCafe will inspire and teach - for free.

Personally, various gestures described properly can tell the story - "...as he stormed his way through the door" tells the reader he's ready for a fight, upset - whatever follows that.

There is more than one way to tell a story, and I hope that you find your own voice. It is vital that your unique perspective comes through above all else - grammatical and spelling issues can be corrected. Mixed tenses can be corrected. It would be sad, however, if you lose your voice based on someone else's idea of what is the right way to tell a tale.

I'll leave those pesky grammar/spelling matters to others. Just make sure that you stay in the correct POV. The story is being told by Julie: she cannot read minds (not yet!) and therefore her descriptions of others have to reflect that: "...as she sketched absent-mindedly in her sketchbook". Julie has no way of knowing that she is "absent-mindedly" doing anything. Julie can only describe her perception of her facial expression: "as she SEEMED to be absent-mindedly...".

I hope that this helps you to keep in mind that you are the author, new styles of writing are everywhere today, unlike way back when, and that you work hard to keep your own voice when telling your stories.

I like the premise of this tale and am looking forward to reading more of your work, and, please, do not let one old codger with fixed and set views deter you. Your talent, even if raw, is evident in this first offering.

Carry on....