Kill the Earth

“Will this really be the last one? We can’t let this happen!”

“I know. But, even with us four, there’s no way we’ll be able to make it in time.”

“But we still have to try!”

“Listen, there’s just too much land to cover in such a short amount of time, and everyone else is either too weak or sick to even try to help.”

“I hate this. This wasn’t the outcome we wanted. It’s all our fault.”

“Hey. You know damn well this isn’t what we made it for. So, stop talking like that.”

The two of us stand there alone: me, feeling incredibly guilty despite his words, and him, looking annoyed that I had defaulted yet again to feeling this way.

“I just can’t believe that this is really the end,” I whisper. “I never thought it would actually happen during our lifetime… Where did it all go so wrong?”

I take a look at our immediate surroundings, at the inconceivably barren land that stretches out as far as the eye can see. It’s unbelievable to think that this was once a rainforest not too long ago.

We are on the brink of extinction. Ninety-eight percent of humanity has already been wiped off the face of the planet, along with all other forms of life. Whatever creature or specimen might be left is virtually undetectable now. We’re all that’s left, and that’s apparently being taken care of at some point today. 

It’s terrifying to know the day you’ll die, but it’s even worse when you know the day that humanity will change from an endangered species to an extinct one. Not a single person that’s left will be able to survive what’s coming today. This is it… our last moments on Earth, and it’s all our fault. The four of us are unquestionable to blame for this. But, for some reason, my brother thinks otherwise. He’s not a firm believer of the whole “humanity will be the cause of its own downfall,” yet here we are, clearly doing that very thing.

While the human population had still been flourishing well into the billions several years ago, the four of us had strived to somehow help our fellow brethren. We knew that cures for certain diseases were near impossible and well out of our reach with the limited technology that we had available to us, so we, instead, decided to attempt to create a way to make it easier for those who were terminally ill. We wanted to make their last moments be as painless and soothing as we could possibly make it.

My brother, my best friend, the man who would later become my husband, and I all tirelessly worked together on a chemical formula that, in theory, would initially cancel out a person’s pain sensors and nervous system. It would then slowly take away their five senses and would eventually shut down each organ one by one. Because the person would no longer be able to feel anything by that point, they would, therefore, not feel any type of physical pain when their time came. It was the simplest way we could think of for not only the patients themselves, but for any family or friends that may be present during their final moments. There’s nothing worse than watching someone die in horrible pain.

My brother and I had reluctantly pulled the plug on our grandmother during my late teenage years. That act caused her to suddenly go into violent convulsions. It took multiple doctors and nurses to hold her down until she passed. It was a moment that would stick with my brother and I for the years to come. I can still hear her involuntary screams of pain even now.

From that day forward, we desperately wanted to rid that type of suffering from the world, and the other two in our lives thankfully shared our dream.

We weren’t professionals, by any means, and we were working with no type of funding or backup. We were entirely alone, so the furthest we figured we could get would be creating the chemical formula and, if we were really lucky, perhaps even a single prototype. We knew that there was no way that we’d ever have the opportunity to legitimately experiment with it the way we wanted to, let alone ever begin to mass-produce it. 

That’s when the second cogwheel of humanity’s fate began to turn. 

A company none of us had ever even heard of approached us out of the blue one day offering their indefinite aid. They had somehow gotten the word of our theory and of what we had managed to accomplish on our own over the span of five years. They offered to buy the rights to the formula, advising that they could finalize and progress everything for us by using the tools and resources that they had at their disposal. 

The sudden offer took us all by surprise. On the one hand, they were a small start-up company with little to no history despite their unnaturally high number of sponsors behind them. But, on the other hand, they undoubtedly had the means to perfect what we could not. They would surely be able to create and distribute our medicine to anyone who needed it around the world in a short amount of time. It was a tempting offer. 

Despite that, I had a nagging thought at the back of my mind that I couldn’t seem to get rid of no matter what I tried. That feeling manifested in me from a quote that I had once come across on the internet by a Dutch politician named Gijs de Vries, “If information ends up in the wrong hands, the lives of people very often are immediately at risk.” 

I promptly informed the others of my incessant worries. We all agreed that on the contract we were signing to sell our formula, we would also include the condition that the use of that very formula, in whatever form, would be prohibited in waging wars. None of us wanted our hard work to be used to start wars with other countries, much less our own. That’s not what we had spent so many excruciatingly long hours creating it for. 

The company agreed to our condition without a second thought, putting us at ease.

On the year anniversary of us selling it, the first missile was launched. The world was shaken from this sudden development. Everyone believed that it meant the start of World War III, but nothing followed.

After some thorough investigation on our part, we discovered that this had been a type of ‘experimental test’ for a rapidly emerging company. Our stomachs dropped when we read the company’s name. It was the one we had done business with the year prior.

According to the documents we managed to find, they had altered the formula in order to make in an airborne medicine and, in turn, had made a grave mistake in the second half of the calculations. They had accidentally, or maybe purposely, removed the medicine’s major function of shutting down a person’s pain sensors and nervous system. Their version sped up the process of the other two. In other words, the people who had been affected by this first missile had not only succumbed to very painful deaths, but their final moments must’ve been spent in indescribable fear due to losing their senses within seconds of their bodies beginning their shut down process.

This missile wiped out about five percent of the population on the other side of the planet from where it had been launched. Unfortunately, that meant that it had hit where most of our loved ones resided. We had all lost parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, neighbors… They had all been instantly taken from us in the first attack.

Although this didn’t start World War III as many had feared, it was, of course, seen as a terrible act of terrorism by the entire world. The United Nations was in an uproar. Almost every country was adamant about getting rid of the company that had somehow grown large enough to be capable of something to this scale.

It has been unanimously decided that the company and all of its members would be terminated, whatever that meant.

However, something drastically, and very abruptly, changed their minds. Nobody outside of the members directly allowed into the United Nations Headquarters knows what was discussed, or even what exactly occurred inside that building during their final meeting. Every country part of the United Nations voted to back this company up at once, eventually gaining the support from non-United Nations countries, as well.

It was the first time in history that something like this had ever happened. They all strangely agreed with the company’s warped views that if they could work on this formula a little bit longer and essentially perfect it to their standards, then it would become the ideal tool, not weapon, to save our planet.

According to their worldwide announcement that immediately followed, it was the most human option to save humanity from themselves, something that confused us all… even now.

It’s now several years later and we’re currently down to about two percent of humanity left, and the fourth missile is about to be launched… the final nail in our coffin.

“It’s entirely I fault,” I repeat. “We never should’ve created that stupid formula, and much less actually sold it to a company we didn’t even know or fully trust in the first place.

“Hey, stop that,” my brother commands, tightly gripping both of my shoulders to try and calm me down. “We were trying to do good and you know it. We created that formula with the purest of intentions.”

“They just found a loophole to the whole ‘don’t use it for war’ clause that we failed to foresee,” comes my husband’s soft voice from behind me. “Yes, they may have used it to destroy the world, but they technically didn’t use it for war. They made sure to get nearly every country to side with their beliefs. That’s not war.”

I turn around to face him. The solid navy mask that covers his face from the bottom of his nose up to his hairline doesn’t faze me. I’m used to the fact that he’s blind and feels safer with that on. Even now, he is always able to see much more clearly than everyone else, despite his handicap.

I grab both of his hands.

“Then, what are we supposed to do now?” I ask. “I feel so conflicted.”

“Well, first things first: We can’t just keep standing here chit-chatting and just go down without trying to fix this, now can we?” he says with the gentlest of smiles.

I peek over at my brother and quickly bat my eyelashes at him. He sighs in defeat and nods in agreement.

“Fine. You two, try to locate the missile. If along the way you happen to find anyone or anything that can help stop that thing, use it,” my brother suggests.

“But the way they developed it, it goes through even iron and steel… I guess if we find something we haven’t tested yet, then we can at least try it out…” I mumble, not sounding very confident at all.

“Yeah, I know. Too bad almost everything’s been destroyed. We can’t even dig deep enough to figure out if being underground would help. I know it was tested for the third missile, but their shelter was apparently not deep down enough,” my brother sadly states.

Those people he speaks of in such a regretful tone were old colleagues of his from his college years.

“Okay,” he continues. “I’ll try to find our fourth troublesome member to advise him of the plan and to see if he had any brilliant ideas. They’re usually dumb, but they at least work. Man, do I miss cell phones… Anyway, let’s try and stop this thing and save what’s left of our species!”

We run around searching where we can for hours, and I mean literally run. Missiles two and three didn’t only take out most life on Earth, but they also disintegrated nearly every man-made and nature-made structure and material, with the exception of the very few we use for our daily uses.

All that can be seen for miles is almost like a gravel-filled desert. It’s difficult to run on and doesn’t feel good against our worn-down shoes. It’s a depressing sight around us, but we have to keep running. We have something that needs to get done.

I lead my husband by the hand. We don’t have any time for him to use the tools that he had created for himself long ago to help him get around with ease. Plus, it’s become increasingly more dangerous for him to even stand around on his own, so I hardly ever leave his side regardless.

We run.

And we run.

And we keep on running, but we can’t seem to find anything at all. The only hint that we have regarding the possible location of the missile is that it’s somewhere in this portion of the world. If we can miraculously find its exact location, then there’s a slight chance that we’ll be able to possibly cut or mess with its signal so that it doesn’t automatically launch like the last one did. But, that option seems to be creeping further and further away from us the more we run.

Time is running out. We had estimated that it would launch by sundown, and it’s already late afternoon.

I squeeze his hand twice. He knows exactly what that means.

“Let’s go meet up with them,” he suggests in a much calmer voice than I could ever muster right now. “We may as well spend our last moments together. We tried our best.”

He’s right. We’ve been so focused on searching for its location that we haven’t even had the opportunity to say our goodbyes to one another; something that I’ve been trying to unsuccessfully convince myself isn’t needed because everything will somehow turn out okay.

I give a quick nod to try and reassure myself and we start to run toward the only place available for humans to take shelter in on this side of the world.

Almost immediately, the ground below us begins to frantically shake back and forth with a deep rumble emanating from all around us.

“An earthquake?!” I gasp, attempting to keep my balance. That’s the last thing we need right now.

“No,” he says. “This feels more like it’s-”

And that’s when I see it for myself: the last missile.

“Are you kidding me…? It was this close to us the entire time?”

I’m not entirely sure if those words managed to actually leave my mouth. They felt like they got stuck at the bottom of my throat, making me feel nauseous. The fact that it had literally been beneath our feet the entire time hurt me more than the fact that it had been launched.

“Let’s go!” he exclaims, tugging on my arm. Despite the situation, he knows exactly in which direction we have to go and we quicken our pace.

All I can think about on the way is that we’ve failed. Nobody can change my mind. We carelessly failed humanity more than once. I was taught growing up that good is always supposed to win in the end, that everything would always work out for good people. Does that mean we were bad all along? We didn’t manage to do anything good in the end. We couldn’t even save a single child.

We know that we still have a little bit of time before the missile hits. They had oddly been designed to leave Earth’s atmosphere for an unknown reason, would orbit the planet a single time, and would then come back down. So, the estimated time we have is a little over ninety minutes, the amount of time it would normally take a shuttle to orbit the Earth.

We finally reach our destination. This is the only building that we were able to find after the third missile that was still relatively intact. It’s very clearly falling apart now, but it serves its purpose. It’s all the remainder of humanity has to shelter themselves from the unforgiving climate that followed the second missile. Even without any planes in sight, it’s easy to see that it had once been a bustling international airport in the distant past.

However, walking into it is always heartbreaking. This is when I always feel grateful that my husband can’t see. 

There are so many sick, dirty, and hungry people of all ages in every corner imaginable huddled up so close together that it almost looks like they’re absorbing one another. It’s nearly impossible to pick out a single person within the bundles.

We took too long to get here, though, and now we’re exhausted. We decide to sit on the floor where we’re standing to try to calm our breathing a bit.

The air in here makes it so difficult to breathe. I’m trying to concentrate on catching my breath and take a chance to glance out of the nearest window just below someone’s shoulder.

My heart feels like it’s stopped. The last one was the quietest one. It’s here. It’s already landed. 

I can see the strange mist emanating from it and slowly making its way over to us. It’s only a matter of time now before it seeps through the what little glass and walls we have between us and the deadly contents of that missile.

It’s even harder for me to breathe now. I’m beginning to hyperventilate.

My husband hears me panicking and realizes what must be happening. Apparently, even he didn’t hear the missile this time.

He removes his mask and turns to properly face me. He places both of his hands on the sides of my face, forcing me to look at nothing but him.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen his eyes, but even now amidst the end, they seem to still have a tranquilizing effect on me.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Everything’s going to be alright. We did our best, okay?”

All I can do not to cry is nod. My nose hurts.

“I love you more than anything,” he continues. “You’ve been my sole reason for living this long. If it meant your guaranteed survival at this moment, I would gladly sacrifice my body and soul a hundred times over. Thank you for being by my side all this time.”

I can’t hold back my tears anymore as I struggle to respond, “I love you, too… so, so much… I’m sorry…”

He gives me a kiss on the forehead and pulls something out of his pocket.

By now, I’m starting to hear people around us scream in horror, as their senses are slowly being stolen from them. They’re fully aware of what follows. They were all forced to watch what happened to their loved ones with the other missiles. They’re petrified of what’s coming. They don’t want to die. Nobody is ever truly prepared to die, no matter how much they say that they are.

He grabs my hands and re-focuses me. He places five small blue vials into them that look an awful lot like insulin cartridges.

“What is-”

“Take those with you and do what you need to do.”

“What are these for?”

“After the first missile hit, your brother and I decided to try and make an antidote with the prototype we had secretly made and kept. We wanted to right our wrong and try and fight the poison that we had unintentionally created. We couldn’t seem to get the formula right no matter what we tried. Eventually, I was able to make a temporary medicine that could at least bypass the cancellation of the senses for a bit, similar to how they had done for the pain sensors and nervous system. These are like little burst of adrenaline for your body, They don’t last long, a few minutes at most, so use them and-”

My hearing has been almost entirely destroyed by now, but I’m able to read his lips and finish his thought.

“-leave me here. You’ll be able to get to the others much quicker without having me hold you back. Go.”

There’s no way in hell that I’m going to leave him here to die alone. Who does he think he’s talking to? His disability has never once felt like a burden to me, even if it had been to his family and so-called friends in the past, who had selfishly abandoned him at a young age because of it. If it hasn’t bothered me the entire time we’ve known each other, then it sure as hell wouldn’t bother me now, during our final moments together.

I pull him up off of the floor and drag him down the least crowded of the corridors with me. I can see a grateful smile painting his face. Dummy. He knows there’s no room to argue with me about this.

I intentionally ignore all of the suffering I see around me because if I don’t, I know I’ll break. I hate seeing this. I hate hearing this. I need to find my brother and best friend. Nothing else needs to matter right now. I’m sorry.

I look everywhere I can think of. They should be here. But the longer I search, the hazier my vision begins to become. I might be running out of time. I have to constantly look toward my right to make sure that he’s still holding on to my hand because I can no longer physically feel anything either. I hate that my hearing seems to be the last thing that wants to remain until the end.

I rub my eyes to try and ease the burning and itching sensation that I’m having.

“Oh no…”

I glance down at my other hand and decided to give one of the cartridges a try. It’s now or never.

I ingest one. It’s almost like an inhaler. I suck up a quick, short burst of bitter-tasting air into my mouth. I give one to my husband, as well.

Three left.

My vision begins to clear up and I can feel his hand in mine again, not entirely, but just enough for what I still need to do. It actually worked; I can’t believe it. If only he would’ve had more time to perfect it… He really could’ve been our savior.

No, I don’t have the time to be thinking about this. He said that these would only last a few minutes at most. That should be plenty of time so long as my organs and immune system aren’t attacked yet. If I can’t find them by then, then it won’t matter. We’ll all be dead by that point.

I tighten my grip on his hand and pick up my speed. Where are they? Where are-

Down the hall, running up what is left of a non-functional escalator, is my brother, wearing an equally frantic look on his face that I assume mirrors mine. He unquestionably relaxes upon meeting my gaze. His vision is apparently lasting longer than mine was.

As soon as he reaches us, he looks down at what I’m gripping in my left hand and promptly recognizes the items. He turns to look at my husband, clearly amazed.

“I can’t believe you finished it.”

My brother can’t seem to hear himself based on the contorted face he just made, but he knows that my husband was able to hear him from the nod he gave him.

My brother appreciatively takes one and begins with the man to my right.

“Ever since we’ve met you, I’ve always considered you a brother. There was no one else on the planet that I would’ve chosen for my little sister over you. Thank you for always looking after her. And thank you for always being the voice of reason and pushing us forward.”

They hug, no type of embarrassment shown on their faces. This wasn’t the time or place to worry about such childish things.

“Thank you for accepting me into your family after mine had disowned me,” he softly responded.

I’m not ready for this. Who is ever fully prepared to say their final goodbye to a person they cherish knowing that it’s the end?

I can’t swallow and no words are coming out, so my brother happily takes the reins.

“No matter what happens, just know that I’m proud of everything you’ve done and accomplished. I love you. Thanks to you, I didn’t lose myself after ma and pa were taken from us. Thank you for letting me be your big brother.”

There is nothing I can do, nothing I can say to show him how I feel. I’m just hoping that this tight hug I’m giving him as I bury my face in his chest is enough to help him understand my emotions.

I feel someone doing the same thing to me from behind. When I curiously turn around, I see that it’s my best friend, his wife standing beside him.

He’s the last person I need to see. He and I have been best friends since infancy and he’s an irreplaceable part of my heart and soul. Nevertheless, nothing ever needs to be said between us, even now. We know everything.

I give him and his beautiful wife the two remaining cartridges.

The people around us start dropping like flies while we all subconsciously pretend not to notice. We’re aware that it’ll be our turn very soon. We don’t have long at all.

As soon as my best friend inhales his temporary medicine, he kneels down in defeat in front of his wife and places one of his ears on her large belly. He wants to try to hear or fell his unborn child one last time. They had desperately held on to the hope that we were going to have the opportunity to repopulate and start over.

Tears begin to stream down his face as he grabs my husband’s free hand and shakes it in gratitude, whispering, “Thank you.”

His wife lovingly brushes his hair with one hand and rubs the side of her belly with the other.

I nod at her, silently thanking her for making him so incredibly happy and reciprocates.

The five of us huddle together, crying because not only are we living our final moments together, but because we failed to save what little of humanity is left. We had created something that we wished to help people with, but instead led to the species’ inevitable extinction.

We try our hardest to provide the most genuine smiles that we can muster for one another. We need to let each other know that we’ll be okay despite what’s happening. That’s what it means to love someone. Although these smiles are very clearly disguising out pain and regret, they still show how fortunate we are to have known one another. 

I turn to face my husband, etching the sight of him into my mind just before he blurs away into a gray nothingness. His hand slips out of mine and I start to panic against my better judgment trying to locate him. 

All I can hear is a faint beeping deep inside my ears that makes me lose my balance. At least I can’t hear anything anymore.

I no longer have the strength in my legs to remain standing, nor can I physically feel anything anymore apart from the pain inside of me in response to my organs forcibly being shut down one by one.

I keep the faces of my loved ones vibrant in my mind. They will occupy my final thoughts, not pain or fear. Everything I ever did was for them. It’ll be okay. 

And, just like that, I can feel the last remaining two percent of mankind being wiped away from existence as I take my final breath.

THE END.

Author's Note

I wrote this story about a year and a half ago. With everything that's currently occurring around the world due to COVID-19, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit one of the very few stories that I’ve been rather proud of writing. It just always reminds me that we must appreciate any time that we have together with our loved ones. We never know when the next time we’ll see each other will be or even if there will be a next time.

Reviews

[JayG]

• but I think with a little bit of self-confidence, I'll be able to do it some day.

Self confidence helps, of course, but as in everything else, knowledge is a great working substitute for genius. At the moment you suffer from a problem that’s invisible to you, and pretty much everyone who comes to writing fiction. And no matter how hard you may try; no matter how long you may practice, you won’t fix, or recognize the problem, which Mark Twain defined with: “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.”

Think about it: We don’t learn to cook by eating. Nor do we become painters or sculptors by visiting the museum. As consumers we benefit from the professional tools and techniques that were used to create a given product, but we have no access to them. So our only source of knowledge of those techniques in fiction is the writing skills we learned in our school days. But, what kind of writing techniques did we acquire in school?

Did any of your teachers, for instance, explain why a scene on the page, ends in disaster for the protagonist—and must? How much time was spent on scene elements like the short-term scene-goal, introducing tension, and the use and placement of tags in dialog? In fact, did they spend even one second on why a scene on the page and on the screen are so different—and must be?

My point is simple: If we don’t know what a scene is, what its objective is, or how to end it, how can we write one? If we don’t know what differentiates fiction from a report how can we create fiction that will please people who have been choosing fiction that is the result of professional writing and editing since the day they learned to read?

The short version: All professions are acquired IN ADDITION to the general set we call, “The Three R’s.” And since Fiction-Writing is a profession…

So why didn’t you see that problem in your own writing? Because you can’t. None of us can.

Look at the opening to your story, not as the author who knows the situation, the people, and the story before you write the first word, but as rthe reader who knows only what the words you choose suggest to them, based on THEIR background:

The first six paragraphs, 95 words, place us in the second standard manuscript page. In them, two people of unknown gender, located in an unknown location, talk about things meaningful to them, but for which the reader has no context. So at the end of thoseparagraphs the reader knows nothing useful so far as who we are, where we are, or what's going on. And those are the three issues we must address quickly on entering any scene, so the reader has context for what's happening.

But when you read them you already know who’s speaking, what they’re talking about; what they are to each other; what has gone before; the setting in both time and space; the mood of each character and why that’s so. You literally see and hear the action because the words are acting as pointers to images, history, ambiance and a lot more, all stored in your mind and waiting to be called up. So you see the scene play out as you read. You hear the emotion you’d place in your voice were you with the reader and rtelling the story to them. You literally wear the proper facial expressions, and make the gestures that provide visual punctuation. So for you the story lives.

What about the reader? For them, the words are acting as pointers to images, history, ambiance and a lot more, all stored in *YOUR* mind and waiting to be called up. But will they be called up? Where are you when they read it? See the problem? Because you know the story so well, things that are obvious to you but necessary to the reader don’t always make it to the page. But when you read the story your mind automatically fills them in, along with the emotion you want to hear in the dialog, and the rest of your performance,

Have your computer read the story aloud. That’s an excellent editing tool—one you should use—in any case.

So the question arises: Are you screwing up? Is it a matter of talent? Is it a matter of good or bad writing?

The answer is a resounding no. In fact, your writing is up to the task, and much better than most. Were this a school assignment you’d get a good grade because you’re writing exactly as you’ve been taught. But THAT’s the problem. The purpose of universal education is to train us in a set of basic skills that will provide employers with a pool of potential workers who posses a predictable, and useful skill set. In pursuit of that our teachers focus on business writing: reports, letter, and essays/papers—all of which have a goal of informing the reader clearly and concisely. It’s author-centric, which doesn’t mean that it’s first person, it’s that the author is the only on one on stage, explaining what the reader needs to know. And to aid in that it’s fact-based. In short, we're taught nonfiction writing skills.

So look at the structure that results from that training. After a brief conversation, for which the reader has no context, you stop the action and, as yourself, lecture the reader for over 1,400 words. That’s five standard manuscript pages of study on things that took place before the story began. And in that time not a damn thing has happened in the story your reader came to you for. You left those two unknown people in that unknown setting, unable to speak or scratch an itch for FIVE pages as you present a report on the history of the world before they got to wherever they are. The reader’s response? “Will this be on the test? (sorry, I couldn’t resist) My point is: Why does the reader care? That’s history, not story. The reader wants to know what happens next. That’s unknown and therefore interesting. History is immutable, and it’s recited, not lived. After all, how many history books are called page-turners?

In the vast majority of fiction we have A protagonist in a given scene who acts as our avatar. They, and what matters to them in the moment they call “now,” are our focus. Unlike nonfiction, which has an informational goal, fiction’s goal is to make people feel and care. The reader wants to feel as if they’re living the scene in real-time, as-the-protagonist. They want the action to seem so real that if someone swings a fist at your protagonist the reader will duck. And no way in hell can the “This happened…then that happened…and after that…” approach do that. Fiction takes an approach that’s emotion-based and character-centric—an approach your teachers never mentioned as existing. Why? Because they learned their skills in those same classrooms. And an undergrad “creative” writing course (don’t get me started on them) changes that not in the slightest.

In general, I’m impressed with your writing. And I don’t say that often. And bear in mind that nothing I’ve said,above, relates to your talent or potential as a writer, only that, at present, it doesn’t accomplish the goal that E. L. Doctorow defined with: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” And that, we can fix.

The library’s fiction-writing section is filled with the view of pros in writing, teaching, and publishing. You may not always agree with their views, but you do know that they work for them. And it’s always better to go to the pros, for that reason.

In that, I have a specific recommendation: Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, is an older book. He talks of typewriters not word processors. And like men of his time, he tends to assume that “serious” writers are men. But that aside, it is the single best book I’ve found to date on the nuts-and-bolts issues of creating scenes that will grab the reader by the throat. In fact, before encountering that book I'd written six unsold novels and thought myself very close to professional level writing. He burst that particular balloon quickly. I was thinking cinematically, my characters were one-dimensional, and smart when I needed smart, dumb when that was needed.

He opened my eyes and gave some damn good advice because the next four novels I queried for sold.

For a kind of Swain lite, you might dig around in the articles in my writing blog. Many are based on his work. There’s also an audio-book version of his all-day writing workshops on writing and on character building that’s sold on Amazon under the title, Dwight Swain, Master Writing Teacher. It’s not a substitute for the book, but at $6 it’s worth the money for his asides on editors and writers.

Of more importance, I think you’ll find learning the tricks of fiction fascinating—like going backstage at the theater for the first time. And you’ll find yourself often shaking your head and saying, “But that’s so…it’s so obvious, why didn’t I see it myself?

And if you do pick up that book, read it slowly, with lots of time spent thinking about how each point relates to your writing. Practice the point by addressing it on your work so as to make the technique yours, not something to nod acceptance at and then forget a day later. Then, six months later, with a better feel for the issues involved, read it again and you’ll get as much the second time as you did the first.

But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing. It’s a journey, not a destination. So if you write with just a bit more skill every day, and live long enough… 🤪

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