Clash

A clash with oneself.

You find yourself entering a dimly lit room, nothing but concrete walls surround you, the room empty, all but for that small ray of light illuminating the very center of the room. The walls are all black and the floor is white, your eyes search for any sign of an object, but there is nothing. Suddenly, eerie background music begins to emerge from behind you, as though a battle is about to commence, and before you can even catch your breath, before you appears a gray mist, and a silhouette is present within it. You cannot make out the figure as it is shrouded in such a dense fog. The fog clears as the being pushes it away with a strong gust, and before you is now standing a shadow of yourself. You inhale in shock, and time feels as though it is still, nothing but the beating of your heart heard inside your head and felt in your chest. The eyes are a piercing blue, almost blinding, completely contrasting your own, nothing but those ice cold eyes are seen from the darkness. You put up a stance, guarding yourself for what’s to come. You notice the dark version of yourself does the same, as though mirroring your movement. One step is what you take, and in the blink of an eye, the shadow takes two - You quickly realize this shadow is not in tune with you, and what you must do is go toe-to-toe with yourself in an all out battle of one versus self. The door closes behind you, sealing itself shut, and you soon learn that the only way you will escape is if you win. A sign appears in the center of the room and glows in red, and it reads, “Good luck.”  

Reviews

[JayG]

• You find yourself entering a dimly lit room, nothing but concrete walls surround you, the room empty, all but for that small ray of light illuminating the very center of the room.

Like poetry, there’s a lot that’s not obvious to writing fiction—knowledge that must be acquired. Simply reading the words, above, will tell the reader that it happened, yes, but it can’t make the reader feel it happening. But they must, because the reader isn’t with you to learn the details of some fictional events. 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.”

It’s not all that hard to do that, but first, you need to know that you must, and then, the techniques of doing that. Like poetry, we don’t tell the reader the protagonist cried, we give the reader reason to weep.

When you read the words of your first line, they act as a pointer to an image that’s stored in your head. And that calls up a feeling of ambiance, knowledge of what went before, and more. But…when the reader sees the words of the first line, they act as a pointer to an image that’s stored in *YOUR* head.

The fix is pretty straightforward, add the tricks the pros take for granted—the tricks the reader expects to see the result of. Then, practice them by using them to write with, till they’re as intuitive to use as the skills you now use, and there you are.

Not good news I know, but as in poetry, art conceals art and we never notice those skills in play, and so, never realize their necessity.

For an intro to them, this article defines one very powerful way of pulling the reader into the scene.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

It’s a condensation of a technique from 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

Try a few chapters. I think you’ll find it an interesting read.

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

[Insatiable Writer]

Thank you so much for your help! I appreciate it!