The Mirror

When a young realtor buys an old Victorian mansion, she is led on a mysterious journey.

     Analeigh was a thirty year old Realtor. She had purchased the perfect home, or so she thought. It was a quaint old Victorian in the historic district of Kingston. As she rode through Kingston, she had spotted it and knew it was a place she wanted to call home.

     She was settling in quickly and making it her own. There was lots of painting, some repair work. The main thing she did not want to do was to take away from the character of the house. After all, character was not something she could replace. There were long days of repairing windows, ripping up carpet, replacing torn wallpaper and painting.

     It was a daunting task but one Analeigh was up for. Oh there were plenty of friends and coworkers that would occasionally stop by to help but for the most part, it was her project. The two lower floors required the most attention. It took weeks before they were completed and she felt satisfied enough to move on to the third floor. There were two small bedrooms on the second floor but it was the bedroom on the third floor that she would claim for her own. This floor was all open, all one room. That was the biggest reason she chose it. It was equivalent to the Penthouse in a fancy hotel. The polish had worn off of it but with a little paint and the right furnishings, it would be perfect.

     One thing she didn't change was a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror. It was quite eye-catching. Gold quilded and elegantly carved it just drew you in. Analeigh had seem frames of this quality in her grandmother's house, just not as large. Something about it fascinated her. She walked around the old poster bed and pulled the tattered bedding from it. They would be trashed but the bed would stay. It was very stately and had cannon-ball posts on each corner. It was dusty and dirty but it was still easy to see the intricate carvings in the headboard. What it must have taken to do such intricate work. If this room could talk what tales would it tell?

     On a Saturday morning, Analeigh decided to clean the old mirror.with window cleaner in hand she began spraying the mirror. Like the bed, the mirror had a lot of carving in it and took a lot of care just to clean the frame of it. When she went to wipe down the mirror itself her hand suddenly disappeared into it. Alarmed, she drew her hand back. What was this she thought, She was mystified. Curiosity got the best of her, easing her hand back into the mirror her entire body suddenly fell in. She tumbled for what seemed like an eternity through darkness. What had she gotten herself into and where was she going?

     She finally fell into daylight at the edge of a cornfield. Pulling herself up, she dusted herself off. Gunfire that appeared to be very close caught her attention. There were men running wildly past her with long-barreled guns and one of them fell at her feet. Blood gushing from his chest made her take a step back. The uniform he was wearing she recognized. It was that of a Union soldier. She somehow had been transported back to the Civil War. How was this even possible she thought.

     What was the connection between the Civil War and the mirror? Just on the other side of the field across from her was a large stately mansion. When all of the men had run past her, she ran across the field to the old house. Parts of the old house had taken on gunfire as the bullet holes were obvious. Despite the unkept appearance, it was still a beautiful piece of architecture. Standing just outside of the house now was a young girl dressed in a lavender gown of the period. Wow this is pretty cool she thought. She seemed to be shaken and crying with handkerchief in hand. Analeigh spoke to the girl but she didn't acknowledge her. It was all very strange that the girl did not even see her. A few minutes later it became obvious why she was crying. The body of an older man laid on the foyer floor just inside the house. He had a pistol at his side but could not save himself. It was the soldier she thought. She walked into the large drawing room where an older woman sat crying. Apparently she could not see Analeigh either. The Civil War never made any sense. The greed of the Yankees made it so brutal and the south was so poor.

     Analeigh walked further into the house and saw no one else. You could tell the soldiers had been through the house and ripped it apart. The furniture had been ripped by their swords and elegant vases and stonework thrown about the house. It was a large three story house filled with what would now have been considered antiques. They were just useless artifacts now. The first floor consisted of the drawing room, parlor and the library. The second floor housed four large bedrooms all of them once very elegant. On the top floor in a large bedroom she finally found what she was looking for, the mirror. It was facing the large poster bed. This time her hand did not go through it. This was where the mirror originated. While she was there another young woman came in and stood in front of the mirror. Even though Analeigh was not noticed by her, she felt the need to go back to her home. Now that she understood about the history of the mirror, there was no reason for her to be here. How hard would it be to get back though.

     She walked back to the cornfield to the spot where she arrived. Would it work she wondered. It had to! Sticking her hand in the field, it disappeared just like in the mirror. Walking into the cornfield, her journey began again into darkness. With a thud, she fell out onto the floor of her own house. She looked back at the mirror and admired it but had no further desire to investigate what was beyond it. The mirror would be able to keep its secrets.

Reviews

[NickOdyssey]

Really interesting idea! You give appropriate visuals when you focus on them, like with the layout of the house (you glance over some things like what kind of painting or intricate designs the rooms and furniture had, when you can have a lot of ideas for them).

The second person stuff with "You" is a bit distracting, and the story works fine as a third person narrative. The story's climax had substantial descriptions that had power in them, and you have a nice sense of pacing throughout it.

[JayG]

Well, you’re working hard, and I certainly support your goal of becoming a published author. Since there are some significant—and correctable—things working against you, though, I thought you would like to know.

The primary problem, one you share with over 90% of hopeful writers is that you made the natural assumption that since you were given a skill called writing in school, use it for all your writing needs, and, were not told differently, the term “writing” in the profession called Fiction-Writing must refer to the skill you know as writing.

If only…

Think back to your schooldays, and the test thay never gave, on the issues they never covered:

1. Define the elements of a scene on the page, and explain why they're so different from one on screen and stage.
2. What are the three issues a writer must address quickly on entering a scene in order for the reader to have context for the action?
3. Why does a scene on the page usually end in disaster for the protagonist?
4. What’s the difference between POV as defined by personal pronoun usage and viewpoint?
5. When and how should the narrator appear on stage, and when should they be invisible (and how do we make them so)?
6. How do we use scene and sequel to connect scenes, and why?
7. How do you use the Motivation/Response Unit technique, and, how does that change between close and distant viewpoint?

The short version: Because professions are acquired after our time spent learning the traditional, “Three R’s," and Fiction-Writing is a profession, like everyone but those taking a degree in Commercial Fiction Writing, you left your school years exactly as qualified to write fiction as to pilot an airliner. It can be fixed, of course, but remember: Since the day you learned to read you, and everyone you know, have been choosing fiction that was created using professional skills. It’s what you expect to see in use in the fiction you buy, and what others expect to see in your work. Think of how many self-published books you’ve purchased and recommended to others. Not many? That's because 95% or better of self-published work is created with the skills we're given in school, and written by people who are unaware there are other approached to fiction. In fact, of the submissions publishers receive, fully 75% are written by people who have done no study,a nd are seen as unreadable.

Given that, it makes sense to spend a bit of time, and perhaps a few coins on acquiring those necessaryskills. Right? It won’t make you a published author, because that’s your job. But like chicken soup for a cold, it sure can’t hurt. And, if you truly are meant to write, you’ll enjoy the learning, and spend a lot of time slapping your forehead and saying, “But that’s so…it’s so obvious, why didn’t I see it, myself?

I won’t kid you. It’s not a simple list of, “Do this instead of that,” items. Like any profession there’s a lot to it. And added to that is that over the decades you’ve practiced your nonfiction report-writing skills until they feel intuitive, and are fully automatic. So when you do try to change to another approach—emotion rather than fact-based, and character rather then author-centric—those skills are going to invisibly redirect your fingers back into what feels “right.” You won’t even notice it until you go back and diagram the M/R (motivation/response) units and find there aren’t any.

But it will come, and you will LOVE the difference as the protagonist becomes your writing partner, hovering invisibly by your ear and whispering advice and warnings into your ear to the point where to will feel as if you’re mostly making suggestions and recording actions, while the protagonist, and you, are living the scene you’re writing. And from experience—after having once written for 36 hours straight with breaks only for bathroom and to eat what my wife pushed in front of me because I HAD to know how a scene I was writing worked out—I can tell you that the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun.

So…to better understand how much the professional skills differ from the skills our schooldays give is, check a few of the articles in my WordPress Blog. They’re aimed at the hopeful writer.

Then, download Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It is, by far, the best book on the nuts-and-bolts issues of creating scenes that sing to the reader that I’ve found. And read it slowly, with time for thought and practice as each new concept is introduced, so you don’t just nod understanding and then forget you read it a few days later. The leftmost of the three buttons (the one labeled in Russian, can be used to select the format for your reader.
https://ru.b-ok2.org/book/2640776/e749ea

Fair warning: he will make you feel stupid for having missed so much, and that really stings. But you will LOVE the difference in your writing once you master the techniques.

So dig in. And as 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/