Prologue

Rain washed the windows of the small café as she sat in a corner booth, a steaming mug of tea warming her chilled fingers. The sky fell in sheets, relentless and never ending, and she watched never moving. The rain whispered and the sky grumbled and the lightning crackled. And she listened to their voices without really hearing. It was all so nostalgic. 

Once upon a time she had loved rain. Once upon a time she had loved the rain not because of the smell or the life it nourished, but for the sole reason that it kept her inside. But once upon a time before that she had wanted the rain to go away and the sunshine to come a play. Once upon a time she had asked her mother this: "Why must it rain when I want to play out in the sun?" 

And her mother had replied, pulling her into her warm lap, "Sometimes you just have to create your own sunshine, baby girl." Her mother cupped her rough hands around her little soft ones and blew, the air tickling her palms. She giggled before falling silent in awe. A tiny sparkling orb blossomed over their palms and grew and grew and grew into a dazzling miniature sun. It was warm, hovering and dancing in front of her and she yelped in glee. When the sun was the size of a melon her mother asked, "Are you ready?"

"For what mama?"

"You'll see," she smiled, "one, two."

"Three!" they shouted together, tossing the orb into the rafters of their small cottage. Leaping off of her mother's lap, she danced around the room laughing. Golden light softened everything and glitter fell from the ceiling. The orb swooped, chasing her around the room. And her mother sat watching her joyful little girl, her baby sunshine, with unconditional love in her delicately weathered features. 

Every rainy day after, her mother had brought sunshine to their cottage illuminating the room with endless imaginings. Their home had been small, one room, two beds, one table, and a large fire place. But she had loved it. All she needed was her Mama, her Papa, and her sunshine. As she grew, her mother taught her how to breathe life into sunshine. How to control them and keep them safely. Rainy days became her favorite days, the days when her mother would teach her about Father Sun and his gifts. Until the kingsmen had come knocking. 

She had been ten, only ten, dangerously naïve and pitifully helpless. She had been sitting across from her mother as she chopped vegetables for dinner, telling stories about Father Sun and his people. Her people. She had played with her new found gift, a small ball of light weaving between her fingers as she listened intently to her mother's smooth, rich voice.

Bang, bang, bang. Shock bit her and her light flickered and died with all the other sunshine in the room. Suddenly it was dark like the foreboding in her gut. Fire light licked the walls dangerously and the rain. The rain no longer sang a sweet lullaby of love, but cried a sorrowful ballad of fear. 

"Kingsmen, open up!" Bang, bang, bang, anger and fear creeped beneath the door. Lighting flashed, distorting her sight, the thunder that followed bellowing for her to run. Her mother blanched, rushing around the table, kneeling in front of her. She grabbed her shoulders and squeezed almost painfully.

"Remember the rules about the sunshine?"

"Never tell anyone, never show anyone," she repeated her mother's words.

"Good girl," her mother smiled solemnly. 

"Open up! We know you're in there!" They flinched.

"Yes, I'm coming," her mother called back. "No matter what happens remember the rules, and never break them." Her mother pulled her in for a tight hug and kissed her on the forehead. She wanted to hold on forever, squeezing her mother as hard as she could. But their embrace ended far too quick.

"Mama I'm scared," she whimpered clutching at her mother's skirts as she stood. 

"It's all going to be alright." But she knew that her mother was lying. She didn't know why the kingsmen were on their doorstep but she knew that her mother was scared. 

"Be brave, sunshine." And she nodded for her mother. Her mother's face hardened and she opened their front door.

"Would you like anything else, miss?" She slammed back into reality, her mother's silhouette in the doorway fading. Shaking her head to clear it, she locked eyes with the young serving girl who had pulled her from her memory. She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could utter a word, the girl's gaze moved down, shock filling her widening eyes. She stepped back in fear and... was that awe on her stricken face. Glancing down to see what the girl was so afraid of, she cursed. A small orb of sunshine bobbed over her cupped palms. Lost in memories, she had made a grievous mistake. And broken one of her mother's rules. This wasn't good. Clenching her fists, the sun extinguished. Standing, she let her arms fall hidden beneath her molded green grey cloak. 

"No,thank you. I'll be on my way." She tossed a nickel on the table, far too much for the one cup of tea that still sat full and steaming, but hopefully enough to buy the serving girls silence for at least an hour or so. If she was luckyshe might even get a half days' head start. Pulling up her hood, she strolled out of the café and into the rain that she once loved. 

Author's Note

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Reviews

[JayG]

First, let me say that this is one of damn few posts on this site that make me WANT to look closer. Well done.

And that being said, I do have a few points worth mentioning.

First, when posting a Word document, if it’s indented via the ruler’s indent tabs it will format properly, here—unlike in a normal post or comment. So you can present a more book-like appearance. And though it’s not obvious when you post a story, when you come back and view it, you can edit what was posted.

Next: At the moment you’re focused on telling the story pretty, at the expense of story. This piece can be squeezed quite a bit because you’re over-explaining and embellishing to the point where it slows the narrative. Think about it. The longer it takes to read a given line the slower the story moves. It’s a balance between being terse and being pretty, of course, but if, for example, it takes longer to read about a character doing something on the page than to do it in life, the story moves in slow motion from a reader’s viewpoint. In practical terms, that means that fewer words = more impact. The trick is to remove the extras without losing your “voice.”

I think you may be focusing too hard on how you might perform it in person, where your performance counts as much as what you say. Great of the audience can view and hear the storyteller. But on the page the reader can’t hear the emotion in your voice, or see your performance.

A few comments on the prose:

• …and she listened to THEIR voices without really hearing.

Their voices? Perhaps “to the voices around her without…” might be more appropriate since we don’t know who “they” are.

• Once upon a time she had loved rain.

What function does the word “had” serve, other than to distance the reader from the story? Using it takes the reader into the past tense of a story told in past tense. And you want to avoid that.

Some of those “had been’s” can be changed to “was” for more immediacy, as in, “She had been ten, only ten,” Which changes to “She was only ten.” I also removed the repeated ending to the sentence because while it works in person, on the page there’s no change in emotion and intensity for the repeated words as there would be when a storyteller performs them. Have the computer read this chapter aloud and you’ll hear how different what a reader gets by reading is from your performance.

That paragraph also demonstrates a problem you need to look at, which is that in the interests of pretty, you’re way, way over-explaining.

You use eighty-two words to say, “She once loved rainy days (reason unspecified at this point) and before that liked sunny days better.” That’s a lot of words to say what eighteen can. But of more importance, what does a reader get from this that develops character, moves the plot, or sets the scene? Nothing. We don’t yet know who she is, where she lived, or anything meaningful, story-wise. So a reader has no context to put it into perspective, or generate a mental image. Does this café have Internet? At this point, given what the reader knows, they probably visualize a Starbucks.

And who cares that the character once liked rainy days if we don’t know why? Her story lives in the moment she calls now, not in some generalities on her past.

The short version? Start your story with story. Move them emotionally, not factually. Drop a body through the ceiling. Set the place on fire. Give her a problem that must be solved. Make the reader care, not just know.

If weather matters, begin your story on that rainy day, when she learn to toss the orb. Do we care that before that event she liked to play outside? No. So why mention it? Place the reader on the scene, as HER, experiencing what she does, as she does, in real-time.

Does it really make sense, from a storytelling viewpoint to begin HER story with her in that café, at an unknown time and place, and then, leave her sitting there doing nothing while you talk about things that happened before the story began? Is it fair to the star of this story that you hog all the stage-time talking, without giving her a chance to live the adventure?

Never lose sight of the fact that you cannot, cannot, cannot make the reader hear the voice of the narrator. Nor can they see your gestures, your expressions, or your body-language—in other words, your performance. So anything the narrator says will be “heard” by the reader in a monotone modified only by punctuation, and what the words suggest to that reader as-they-are-read. And since they can’t know what the words WILL say, they reach the end of the sentence before they know how they should have read it.

That’s why, as a general thing, the narrator is not the storyteller. They’re only working to support the protagonist by serving the needs of necessary interjection, not talking to the reader ABOUT the protagonist.

The protagonist, though, is a very different thing. You can tell the reader how she speaks her words. You can make the reader know her tone and delivery. Of more importance, by making the reader know what matters to her, and what she feels she must to—and why—you can make the reader know the scene in real-time, AS her. Why that matters so much is clarified in this article:
https://wordpress.com/posts/jaygreenstein.wordpress.com

The problem you face is that because you already know the story, and how to perform it, when you read the story it works perfectly. But your intent never makes it to the page, so the reader has only what your words suggest to them, based on THEIR background and perceptions. And since that will differ with people of different ages, background and gender, no two readers will perceive the story in the same way.

But, if you can make them all perceive the events as HER, and through her biases and preconceptions, rather than her be someone YOU talk about, then everyone gets the same story. And fair is fair. You’re going to make this poor girl’s life hell. The least you can do is let her star in her own story, as the reader’s avatar rather than someone you report on.

Want some the good news? I’m talking about the learned part of the profession. So this isn’t about good/bad writing, talent, or the story. It’s that because you, like everyone else, came to telling your stories believing that since we spent so much time in school learning to write, we have the tools we need.

If only. ;)

Think of how many essays, reports, and papers you had to write in your school days, as against stories. Think of how many of your teachers—the ones who evaluated those stories—had a clue of how to write for publication. See the problem? They never mentioned that fiction has its own set of necessary skills. But who was there to tell them, given that they learned to write in those same classrooms?

So in the end, though they never told you, you learned a style of writing that is author-centric and fact-based, meant to inform. Just the thing employers want. But fiction is read for entertainment. Your reader wants an emotional, not an informative experience. When you read a romance you aren’t looking to know that the protagonist has fallen in love with someone. You want the writer to make YOU fall in love. And no way in hell can your book-report writing skills handle that task. You need writing techniques that are emotion-based and character-centric.

And the creative writing courses you took as an undergrad? If they’re like the ones I’ve seen they’re useless. First, because they have you read a bit of overview on writing fiction, or poetry, or… And then, you write a poem or story that’s commented on by the other students—as if they had a clue of how to do that. More than that, writing fiction is a profession. No way can you meaningfully learn it in a fraction of a semester having written one of two stories.

And English Lit classes, with their primary focus on literary style writing, and analysis of themes and such, rather than how an acquiring editor views a manuscript, are no better.

So…I’m pretty certain this wasn’t something you wanted, or expected, to hear. And for any pain this may cause I’m sorry. I’ve been there. I wrote six unsold novels before a paid critique of my work showed me how little I knew. And that hurt…a lot. But on the other hand, after I fixed the problems I sold my next novel, so…

And since you are writing so well, now, I thought you might want to learn this before you harden bad habits into concrete.

She solution is simplicity itself: add the tricks of the fiction writing trade to your present writing skills and there you are. Unfortunately, though, simple doesn’t equal easy, because there’s a lot to learn, and it took you most of your twelve years of practice till the skills you presently use felt intuitive. It won’t take that long to perfect those new skills, if for no reason other than that such things as spelling, grammar, etc., do work in both forms. And, of course, you won’t be learning at the speed of the slowest student in the class (plus, the homework is to write fiction, which is fun).

But I won’t lie to you, it’s an absolute b***h, because your current writing reflexes are going to howl with outrage, and grab for the controls as you write. And since what they force you to do “feels right,” you probably won’t realize it’s happening. It can be immensely frustrating.

But when it does come, you’ll wonder why it was so hard to learn, and you’ll LOVE the immediacy of the prose. And, in fact, since you’ll be writing from the seat of the protagonist, and having her guide you, the act of writing will become a lot more fun. If you’ve not had your protagonist say, “Hell no, I won’t do that,” she’s not a living person for either you or the reader.

So, a prescription: First, to give you a feel for what you need to focus on, and why, the articles in my writing blog are meant to give more an overview than a writing lesson.

Then, pick up a copy of Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It’s an older book, one that talks about your typewriter. And like the men of his time, he talks as if most writers are men (and at the time, he was probably not altogether wrong). But if you can get past that, it is, by far, the best book on the nuts-and-bolts of creating scenes and linking them into an exciting story that I’ve found.

Just be certain that you read it slowly. Every few pages, especially in the first half of the book, he introduces a concept that will make you say, “Why didn’t I think of that myself?” When you get done shaking your head at missing something so obvious, take some time to think about how that point relates to you and your stories. Then, spend enough time practicing and using the skill that it becomes yours, as against something to see, nod, and forget a few days later.

Then, about six months from now, after you’ve used those skills and become comfortable with them, read the book again. This time, better knowing where he’s going, you’ll pick up enough that’s new to equal what you got the first time.

So while I’m pretty certain I haven’t made your day, hang in there. It never gets easier, but as with every field, with work, study, and practice, you do become confused on a higher level. And, the ratio of crap-to-gold changes for the better. So whatever you do, keep on writing.

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