Prologue

How far into the rabbit hole are we? Are we towards the end, or just the beginning?

     The ominous door closes with a heavy thud behind the detective as he enters the interrogation room. The small ten by ten space is void of movement, until the chair across from a still man is pulled out, breaking the spell.

     The man already sitting doesn’t look up as a cup of coffee is set down within reach. Without releasing his neck from a ridged angle, he sees that the brown liquid has no steam compared to the cup the detective places on his own side, indicating the distrust that felt thicker by the minute.

     “I feel as if I have no reason to introduce myself,” the detective says while sliding into the chair with ease. It was as if he had done the same technique a hundred times before. “It’s nice to finally put a true face to the name, Matthew.” The bitter words slithered out.

     Matthew feels his muscles tense from the condescending done, catching himself before giving away a tell of unease. His hands rest on the table unclenched, baring raw and chaffed knuckles that led to fingertips stained from dirt. Further up his arms started a black trench coat with a high collar, which bodes well for hiding the newly forming scar on the right side of his neck that is sure to leave a missing line in the continuously growing beard that seems to have gone untrimmed for weeks.

     The detective leans back in his chair, tapping the side of his cup every time he processed a new physical detail from Matthew’s appearance. “I don’t expect you to want to talk to me,” he started in, putting purposeful rasp in his voice, “but like I’ve said before, we have similar interests.”

     Forming a grin in one corner of his mouth, Matthew slowly turns his head to make direct eye contact with the detective. It was Matthew’s first time seeing his true face as well. The brown eyes on the man in control weren’t welcoming though, they were deceiving in a horrifying way in how they held false promise.

     “Look, I gave you information, and a chance to walk away. But instead, you chose to believe Nelson.” The name puts a tinge in Matthew’s stare, causing it to subside completely. He looked up at the daunting mirror past the detective, sure of his knowledge of the persons behind it. He was a caught animal on display.

     It starts to feel warmer than need be in the room, a familiar feeling that left Matthew reminiscing about a simpler time, when things hadn’t gotten so far, when things didn’t line up so perfectly.

     It all started with a key, he thought to himself, still puzzled by the outset of it all. It didn’t need to get to this. The plea like thought rattled inside as he shifts in the metal seat he’s been confined to for hours.

     The detective sits back and crosses his arms with a sigh pressing outwards. He dresses himself as ready to listen. “I’m gonna ask you one more time,” his head drops, hiding his eyes behind his bushy browed forehead, all before breaking a silence that was entirely too long, “where is Syphus?”

     Matthew lets out a devious chuckle, shifting the mood in his favor. He licks his chapped lips. “You’re asking the wrong question, detective,” The depth in his words begin. His eyes trail down onto the detective’s face until eye contact is made. “We don’t need to know where Syphus from Syntec is.” The detective leans forward, grasping at the idea of knowledge he didn’t already know. “What you really meant to ask was, where is N?"

Author's Note

**Brief disclaimer** This is a re-imagining of a preexisting story that contains real persons. For the sake of receiving entertainment from a new source, the story being presented is NOT 100% cannon with what is seen in the collection of videos provided by the Matthias YouTube channel. This written story is rather an alternate universe and should be treated as fiction. Please view the complete disclaimer in the chapter selection of the book here:
https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/dominicrosales/2767991/

Reviews

[Vertigo Cat1111]

Woah! The writing here is great and Matthew is pretty intimidating if you ask me. The scars are nice details that tell you more about the character and adds a lot to it. I can't wait to read more, because it feels so smartly written, every detail perfectly in place.

[JayG]

Given that you’re spending so much time on this, and working hard, I though you’d want to know about the structural problems that are getting in the way for the reader.

I know something like this isn'twhat you were hoping to see when you posted this, but since we’ll never fix the problem we don’t see as being one, and what’s getting in your way is a misunderstanding we pretty much all suffer from when we come to writing fiction, I thought you might want to know.

Basically, because we spend more than a decade in school practicing a skill our teachers called writing, we make the natural assumption that the word writing that’s part of the profession we call, Fiction-Writing, refers to the skill we perfected via the endless reports and essays we were assigned over the years. But the goal of an essay is to inform. Data is provided by an unseen, unheard, unknown, and, dispassionate narrator. And if people were reading fiction to learn the details of the events being listed, anyone could write fiction with no more than those skills we’re given in school.

But people read fiction as a form of entertainment, not to study the history of someone who never actually lived. So fiction isn’t told by a narrator who has no more emotion in their voice than punctuation suggests. It’s neither explained nor reported. As E. L. Doctorow puts 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.”

In a romance we don’t report that the protagonist feel love, we make the READER fall in love. We don’t explain that a horror story’s protagonist feels terror. We terrorize the reader and make THEM afraid to turn out the lights. We either move them, emotionally, on every page or where we fail to do that is page where they close the cover. We don’t TELL the reader about the protagonist’s life, we place them on the scene as-the-protagonist, and in real-time. And, moment-by-moment we SHOW that character’s life by making the reader live it.

The problem is, doing that that takes an entirely different approach, and, set of writing skills.

But remember where I said you wouldn’t see the problem? The author won't. That’s because you know the situation, the location, the backstory and character mood before you read the first word. So you have something the reader lacks, context.

Look a the opening as a reader, who has only the context you provide or evoke, as-they-read:

• The ominous door closes with a heavy thud behind the detective as he enters the interrogation room.

You read this knowing who the protagonist is as a person. The reader doesn’t. You know if the “detective” is being observed, or if our protagonist is the detective. The reader doesn’t. And you cannot say, Wait...read on and it will become clear.” Why? Because there is no second first-impression. A first-reader in the publisher’s, or agent’s office will see this s a rejection point. And as someone who owned a manuscript critiquing service, I can tell you that in such an office, it’s “one strike and you’re out.”

The thing you miss is that if the detective is the protagonist he should be named immediately. But since he's not, the man in the room cannot know who and what he is simply because he comes into a room.

Next: “Ominous door?” What in the pluperfect hells is an ominous door? The reader doesn't know where we are in time and space. We could be an archeologist investigating a crypt, a school kid outside the principal’s office, or a million other things. And in the end, it can only be so in the protagonist's mind, because of factors important to that character. But we have no protagonist. Your reader won't wait till the end of the sentence and then stop to see i they can interpret it, based on what it said as an entirety. They react to what the words suggest to them, as-they-read. And at this point we don’t know there’s “a” door, let alone “the” door. So while it makes perfect sense to you, here is the place where the rejection occurs. And your story deserves better.

It’s not a matter of talent, or how well you write. It’s that, as Mark Twain put it: “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.” And THAT’S fixable.

Since you learned to read, every novel you’ve chosen was published, which means written with the skills the pros take for granted. You won’t see the skills being used, and learn them as you read, any more than you gain the skills of a chef by eating. But you do expect to see the result of using them, and will know, in a paragraph, if they were used.

More to the point, your reader will know, which is the best argument I know of for picking up those tricks. After all, they do offer degrees in commercial fiction writing, and at least some of those skills must be necessary, right?

I know this is really lousy news, but it’s news that every hopeful writer must face, so you have a LOT of company. And since knowledge is the cure…

The local library system’s fiction-writing section can be a huge resource. My personal favorite, though, the book that got me my first contract offer, is available free at the address just below this paragraph, so give it a try. Maybe it will do the same for you. It’s and older book, but since the 1980’s I’ve found none better. Just copy/paste it into any Internet URL window, at the top of the page, and hit return to get to the site.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

So dig in. And while you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

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