More fiction from the darkluna vaults
Mar. 9th, 2008 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darklunaHi, and welcome to this week's edition of How Not To Write.
This is not from the epic Monkees fic. It's from the epic first novel, which has until now languished in well-deserved obscurity in the depths of my big box o' random old crap. I started it when I was 13. It is pretty bad. I found it on a backup disc, thank goodness. I don't think I could've stomached typing it in.
Here, we meet Our Heroine,Mary SueEdie.
She had long, straight hair, an unnatural silver-gold-blond. She was thin as February and pale as that month’s ice, but her eyes were startlingly black. She moved with grace unusual in one so young.
That's a lot of specialness, kids. In far fewer words than you will ever see Younger Me use again. But I was very efficient in my nonsense-to-word-count ratio!
Our Heroine is unhappy at home, of course. She was emo before there was emo. There's this whole long tedious thing about her high school that is not even funny in its badness.
She runs away from home, follows her favorite band around for a bit, blows through her savings, and uses the last of her money to take a bus to a small town she has no connection to, figuring there's safety in randomness. I think when she gets there, she hears there's a big house where lots of people live, and they don't mind taking in strays, or something. I never adequately explained it. But that's why she's looking for a specific road. The sudden present tense, I cannot explain.
Downtown South River catches the setting sun as it sinks toward the mountains. All the windows reflect gold, and the trees are brilliantly green, the dogwood and gardenia flowers impossibly pure white. The late-afternoon small town looks a corner of heaven nestled in foothills.
Oy vey. Is that some foreshadowing I smell in all the floral crap?
But even with downtown glowing before her, Edie feels jitters in her hands and something like fear zipping up and down her spine. When she gets off the bus she lights a cigarette for courage and walks the only way she can: toward the suncaught buildings.
Of course she's a smoker. *eyeroll* Snippage...
So she walks, past the crowded stores and into the quieter, shady, house-lined streets blocks from downtown. The sun is barely a sliver above the mountains, beaming the day's last long streaks of light across the ground. Beside Edie is a wide stretch of yellow-green grass flecked with the rich purple of wild violets. There must have been something here once, but now there is only a wall with faded bricks and ancient chipped paint. Under the outlines of the words "Griner Ironworks" someone has written in newer, white paint "Which would you rather wish on - a steel girder or a dandelion?"
I actually kind of like that graffiti even now. But I wonder if was even aware that it's OK to use unmodified nouns more than once per sentence. More snippage...
She keeps walking beside the silent river, her steps trailed by the buzz of night insects and the slow drone of an airplane high above her. The rain has stopped, but drops still fall from the trees that lean out over the road. In front of her, more traintracks curve, shining with water, pointing in twin silver arcs to the few lights of downtown.
I don't think that's even possible, given that she was walking away from the downtown area. Jesus fuck, I loved description.
On either side of her the trees are thickly green. She imagines they’re closing in on her, and she doesn’t care whether or not they suffocate her. She’s stunned into walking alone, not seeing the road or the coming night, starting to be frightened of what may be within the deep trees.
Cheer up, emo kid! Notice how she's apprehensive here.
The road is disintegrating beneath Edie's feet, becoming gravel that skitters and crunches as she walks. This backstreet here in South River feels to Edie almost like her vaguely-remembered home in Kennesaw. The deep green trees that surround her, the red dirt on her shoes, the dark river and the nightsongs of the crickets; all mirror a place she used to know.
*sniff sniff* Ooh, that was foreshadowing. OK, I'm snipping a lot of description to get to something actually happening. A LOT. It takes the poor girl about 1000 words to walk a quarter of a mile.
Squealing brakes rupture the silence. The car comes out of the mist so suddenly, Eden doesn’t see it until after it narrowly passes her, flying off the gravel onto Honeysuckle Bend and careening around the next curve. Its ancient engine's roar dwindles to a whine and then a feeble rattle, and over the rusty slam of the door an unexpectedly timid voice calls, "Hello? Y’all all right back there?"
"Yeah, I'm O.K." Edie answers, only a little shaken now, walking toward the sound of the voice. She sees the car, all gray-green and shattered glass, and the driver, a young man standing beside the caved-in door. He has short brown hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and almost-green eyes.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry," he says, his words tumbling over each other. "I about knocked you over, didn't I?"
"Don't worry," Edie smiles, touched and amused by his breathless concern. "You didn't even nudge me."
"I bet I gave you a scare, though. Oh - my name's Kip. I guess it's only polite to introduce myself after almost giving you a heart attack." He tugs a nervous hand through his hair.
"Breathless concern"? "Nervous hand"? Don't do this. Please. And remember how she was getting creeped out walking along all by her lonesome? But chatting with a stranger who's a bad driver is totally copacetic, apparently. Trees scary, weird guys good. O_O
"What're you doing out here all alone?"
Edie thinks for a moment. "The whole story's really long and messy," she tells Kip. "But the end of it is that I'm here, I'm alone, and I'm broke."
"If you want, you can come with me. I feel like I owe you something anyway. I'm going home - well, it's not my house, but I live there - I mean, we all do, me and Tony and Hank and Connie and Danielle and whoever else is around." He looks at her hopefully.
He seems harmless enough, Edie thinks. Maybe a little weird, but definitely not psycho. "That sounds great," she says.
I'll take "Bad Life Choices" for a thousand, Alex. I can only assume she has read ahead and knows she'll be safe. :-) Alternatively, I'll take "Convenient Coincidences" for two hundred. Yes, this guy lives where she was going anyway. OK: scene break. And then...
The house is huge, three stories at least, and it looks like it’s ready to give up and collapse. A few of the shutters have already fallen, and most of the survivors hang by one hinge. Ivy and kudzu have invaded the brick walls, veiling them in green. The marble columns are dingy white but still straight and majestic, though the wide front steps before them are beginning to crumble. A hand-lettered sign above the doorbell announces OUT OF ORDER; twin gargoyle knockers leer from the double front doors. A weeping willow hangs over the top floor, nearly embracing the corner of the slate roof.
Oh, wow. I have a ban these days on the word "majestic," because it always seems empty, and sort of like cheating, like telling the reader too much of what I want them to think. I still like the house, though.
More skippage.
Edie thinks this house could hold dozens of people, as bizarre and fantastical as it is, a house someone would dream.
This is embarrassing, wow. This is holding up a sign that says "SEE WHUT I DID THAR? I MADE A COOL SETTING. COOL, HUH?"
But for really embarrassing, let's meet The Love Interest. I'll just be over here, looking for something to dull the pain. Too early to drink yet, more's the pity.
She goes up the left set of stairs, one hand skimming the polished ebony banister. Kip has gone on down the hall to the right; there is a sound, barely above a sigh, behind her. She glances back at the door at the top of the stairs, at the most beautiful young man she has ever seen. He is only there for a split second: a flash of fair skin, startled blue eyes, and a curl of perfectly redgold hair caught in motion. The door almost silently falls shut, and the lock clicks softly. Edie stares at the sleek, featureless oak, hoping she didn't imagine that face.
Is it over? Whew.
OK, so then I describe the room she's staying in, and I describe the kitchen, and I describe Hank, who was in it earlier, acting surly, but got snipped. And I describe Kip fixing stuff for himself and Edie, up to and including the dishes. I'll spare you.
For himself, he takes out a plate filled with odd-looking health food. Seeing Edie's curious expression, he explains, “This stuff belongs to Connell. It’s just bean sprouts, water chestnuts, snow peas....that kind of thing. He buys all this and then forgets to eat, so I end up with it because there's nothing else around. He's a little spacy.”
“Connie’s saner than you,” Hank says protectively. “He just hasn't figured things out yet, so you be nice to him, Harris. You too, Brunette Girl.”
Her hair changed colors. Hee. I did eventually learn to put things like "protectively" in the words the character says, instead of in the dialogue tags.
"Edie," Kip corrects. "And I wasn't making fun of Connie, I was just trying to sum him up."
"Connell Griffin in a hundred words or less?" Hank asks sarcastically. "Impossible." He reaches for the bottle of Southern Comfort and adds a generous amount to his coffee, ignoring Kip's disapproving look.
"Who's Connell?" Edie finally asks what she's been wondering for several minutes. Hank and Kip both stare at her, as if she's asked them to define something inexplicable.
Ooh, nice simile there. And way to tell the reader Hank was being sarcastic. Upshot of conversation: Love Interest is Speshul too. And ooooo, mysteerious! I don't know why he was. I don't remember anything especially worthy of mystery about him. Though he did hide for a while for no real reason I can discern except to artificially build suspense and give Edie an excuse to wander around the house a lot, complete with lovingly detailed enumerations of every paint chip and stairstep. :-D I think this is another case of "OMG, you guys, look how weird and cool I can make my characters!"
This part was obviously written later, as it doesn't suck quite so hard, though I was still clearly so in love with my own narrative voice that I would've dry-humped it if I could have. Maybe I was 16 by this point? I was experimenting with using lots of different points of view. This character, Danielle, is the twin sister of Love Interest. Oh, I have no idea why I named him Connell, except that it was kind of similar to his sister's name, and I thought it was cool/amusing for him to have a nickname that was a girl's name. Whut, Younger Me, whut?
And yet, I actually don't hate this. Eventually I worked toward the idea of making the house a point-of-view character, and I think the seeds of that are in this part. I still can't decide if that's stupid or brilliant. It's such a fine line, y'know.
When we inherited the house, it was all dust and dropcloths, its age obvious with every choking breath we drew. Connie opened all the windows, and most of them haven't been closed since.
He also began what I suppose is best described as a project, turning the house into something only he could envision. He tamed the garden; I helped him discover its paths and its plan. But once I began to spend my days in classes, the straight walks I'd found with him turned into mazes. Lately he has worked inside the house, painting one of the corner rooms on the second floor.
"What will you do when it's finished?"
Connell shakes his hair out of his eyes, a streak of cerulean on his cheek making him seem painted for war. "It will never be finished."
But I know the house as it will be is already a complete picture in his mind. There will be an end to this madness of activity, and every day fills in a little more of the canvas stretched in his mind.
"Someday," I say, and leave, not because I have said all I want, but because sometimes you have to try to speak his language, and it is made more of silences than words. Though he is my twin, our minds seldom have a common ground. I don't know why he became himself and I me. Could I have been that way too, shadows and tongues? Perhaps. My mother once told me that when we were little we spoke our own language together before we knew how to make adults understand us. I wonder if that has not been Connell's path all along, the refinement of a speech for communicating with no one but himself.
It is still awfully "Look at how mysterious he is!!!1!"
Hmm, what can I torture you with next week? Ooh OOH! I once wrote this space-opera romance thing. With a heroine who was sekritly some variety of Chosen One, and a hero who was an outlaw but really a freedom fighter, and a wedding-day abduction. Oh, my babies. It tried so hard; bless its little heart. I seem to remember writing along in it and realizing even at the time that it was silly, and I jotted down something like "She was intensely annoyed at being locked into her cabin, but even more so by the fact that she was still in her damn wedding dress." :D
This is not from the epic Monkees fic. It's from the epic first novel, which has until now languished in well-deserved obscurity in the depths of my big box o' random old crap. I started it when I was 13. It is pretty bad. I found it on a backup disc, thank goodness. I don't think I could've stomached typing it in.
Here, we meet Our Heroine,
She had long, straight hair, an unnatural silver-gold-blond. She was thin as February and pale as that month’s ice, but her eyes were startlingly black. She moved with grace unusual in one so young.
That's a lot of specialness, kids. In far fewer words than you will ever see Younger Me use again. But I was very efficient in my nonsense-to-word-count ratio!
Our Heroine is unhappy at home, of course. She was emo before there was emo. There's this whole long tedious thing about her high school that is not even funny in its badness.
She runs away from home, follows her favorite band around for a bit, blows through her savings, and uses the last of her money to take a bus to a small town she has no connection to, figuring there's safety in randomness. I think when she gets there, she hears there's a big house where lots of people live, and they don't mind taking in strays, or something. I never adequately explained it. But that's why she's looking for a specific road. The sudden present tense, I cannot explain.
Downtown South River catches the setting sun as it sinks toward the mountains. All the windows reflect gold, and the trees are brilliantly green, the dogwood and gardenia flowers impossibly pure white. The late-afternoon small town looks a corner of heaven nestled in foothills.
Oy vey. Is that some foreshadowing I smell in all the floral crap?
But even with downtown glowing before her, Edie feels jitters in her hands and something like fear zipping up and down her spine. When she gets off the bus she lights a cigarette for courage and walks the only way she can: toward the suncaught buildings.
Of course she's a smoker. *eyeroll* Snippage...
So she walks, past the crowded stores and into the quieter, shady, house-lined streets blocks from downtown. The sun is barely a sliver above the mountains, beaming the day's last long streaks of light across the ground. Beside Edie is a wide stretch of yellow-green grass flecked with the rich purple of wild violets. There must have been something here once, but now there is only a wall with faded bricks and ancient chipped paint. Under the outlines of the words "Griner Ironworks" someone has written in newer, white paint "Which would you rather wish on - a steel girder or a dandelion?"
I actually kind of like that graffiti even now. But I wonder if was even aware that it's OK to use unmodified nouns more than once per sentence. More snippage...
She keeps walking beside the silent river, her steps trailed by the buzz of night insects and the slow drone of an airplane high above her. The rain has stopped, but drops still fall from the trees that lean out over the road. In front of her, more traintracks curve, shining with water, pointing in twin silver arcs to the few lights of downtown.
I don't think that's even possible, given that she was walking away from the downtown area. Jesus fuck, I loved description.
On either side of her the trees are thickly green. She imagines they’re closing in on her, and she doesn’t care whether or not they suffocate her. She’s stunned into walking alone, not seeing the road or the coming night, starting to be frightened of what may be within the deep trees.
Cheer up, emo kid! Notice how she's apprehensive here.
The road is disintegrating beneath Edie's feet, becoming gravel that skitters and crunches as she walks. This backstreet here in South River feels to Edie almost like her vaguely-remembered home in Kennesaw. The deep green trees that surround her, the red dirt on her shoes, the dark river and the nightsongs of the crickets; all mirror a place she used to know.
*sniff sniff* Ooh, that was foreshadowing. OK, I'm snipping a lot of description to get to something actually happening. A LOT. It takes the poor girl about 1000 words to walk a quarter of a mile.
Squealing brakes rupture the silence. The car comes out of the mist so suddenly, Eden doesn’t see it until after it narrowly passes her, flying off the gravel onto Honeysuckle Bend and careening around the next curve. Its ancient engine's roar dwindles to a whine and then a feeble rattle, and over the rusty slam of the door an unexpectedly timid voice calls, "Hello? Y’all all right back there?"
"Yeah, I'm O.K." Edie answers, only a little shaken now, walking toward the sound of the voice. She sees the car, all gray-green and shattered glass, and the driver, a young man standing beside the caved-in door. He has short brown hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and almost-green eyes.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry," he says, his words tumbling over each other. "I about knocked you over, didn't I?"
"Don't worry," Edie smiles, touched and amused by his breathless concern. "You didn't even nudge me."
"I bet I gave you a scare, though. Oh - my name's Kip. I guess it's only polite to introduce myself after almost giving you a heart attack." He tugs a nervous hand through his hair.
"Breathless concern"? "Nervous hand"? Don't do this. Please. And remember how she was getting creeped out walking along all by her lonesome? But chatting with a stranger who's a bad driver is totally copacetic, apparently. Trees scary, weird guys good. O_O
"What're you doing out here all alone?"
Edie thinks for a moment. "The whole story's really long and messy," she tells Kip. "But the end of it is that I'm here, I'm alone, and I'm broke."
"If you want, you can come with me. I feel like I owe you something anyway. I'm going home - well, it's not my house, but I live there - I mean, we all do, me and Tony and Hank and Connie and Danielle and whoever else is around." He looks at her hopefully.
He seems harmless enough, Edie thinks. Maybe a little weird, but definitely not psycho. "That sounds great," she says.
I'll take "Bad Life Choices" for a thousand, Alex. I can only assume she has read ahead and knows she'll be safe. :-) Alternatively, I'll take "Convenient Coincidences" for two hundred. Yes, this guy lives where she was going anyway. OK: scene break. And then...
The house is huge, three stories at least, and it looks like it’s ready to give up and collapse. A few of the shutters have already fallen, and most of the survivors hang by one hinge. Ivy and kudzu have invaded the brick walls, veiling them in green. The marble columns are dingy white but still straight and majestic, though the wide front steps before them are beginning to crumble. A hand-lettered sign above the doorbell announces OUT OF ORDER; twin gargoyle knockers leer from the double front doors. A weeping willow hangs over the top floor, nearly embracing the corner of the slate roof.
Oh, wow. I have a ban these days on the word "majestic," because it always seems empty, and sort of like cheating, like telling the reader too much of what I want them to think. I still like the house, though.
More skippage.
Edie thinks this house could hold dozens of people, as bizarre and fantastical as it is, a house someone would dream.
This is embarrassing, wow. This is holding up a sign that says "SEE WHUT I DID THAR? I MADE A COOL SETTING. COOL, HUH?"
But for really embarrassing, let's meet The Love Interest. I'll just be over here, looking for something to dull the pain. Too early to drink yet, more's the pity.
She goes up the left set of stairs, one hand skimming the polished ebony banister. Kip has gone on down the hall to the right; there is a sound, barely above a sigh, behind her. She glances back at the door at the top of the stairs, at the most beautiful young man she has ever seen. He is only there for a split second: a flash of fair skin, startled blue eyes, and a curl of perfectly redgold hair caught in motion. The door almost silently falls shut, and the lock clicks softly. Edie stares at the sleek, featureless oak, hoping she didn't imagine that face.
Is it over? Whew.
OK, so then I describe the room she's staying in, and I describe the kitchen, and I describe Hank, who was in it earlier, acting surly, but got snipped. And I describe Kip fixing stuff for himself and Edie, up to and including the dishes. I'll spare you.
For himself, he takes out a plate filled with odd-looking health food. Seeing Edie's curious expression, he explains, “This stuff belongs to Connell. It’s just bean sprouts, water chestnuts, snow peas....that kind of thing. He buys all this and then forgets to eat, so I end up with it because there's nothing else around. He's a little spacy.”
“Connie’s saner than you,” Hank says protectively. “He just hasn't figured things out yet, so you be nice to him, Harris. You too, Brunette Girl.”
Her hair changed colors. Hee. I did eventually learn to put things like "protectively" in the words the character says, instead of in the dialogue tags.
"Edie," Kip corrects. "And I wasn't making fun of Connie, I was just trying to sum him up."
"Connell Griffin in a hundred words or less?" Hank asks sarcastically. "Impossible." He reaches for the bottle of Southern Comfort and adds a generous amount to his coffee, ignoring Kip's disapproving look.
"Who's Connell?" Edie finally asks what she's been wondering for several minutes. Hank and Kip both stare at her, as if she's asked them to define something inexplicable.
Ooh, nice simile there. And way to tell the reader Hank was being sarcastic. Upshot of conversation: Love Interest is Speshul too. And ooooo, mysteerious! I don't know why he was. I don't remember anything especially worthy of mystery about him. Though he did hide for a while for no real reason I can discern except to artificially build suspense and give Edie an excuse to wander around the house a lot, complete with lovingly detailed enumerations of every paint chip and stairstep. :-D I think this is another case of "OMG, you guys, look how weird and cool I can make my characters!"
This part was obviously written later, as it doesn't suck quite so hard, though I was still clearly so in love with my own narrative voice that I would've dry-humped it if I could have. Maybe I was 16 by this point? I was experimenting with using lots of different points of view. This character, Danielle, is the twin sister of Love Interest. Oh, I have no idea why I named him Connell, except that it was kind of similar to his sister's name, and I thought it was cool/amusing for him to have a nickname that was a girl's name. Whut, Younger Me, whut?
And yet, I actually don't hate this. Eventually I worked toward the idea of making the house a point-of-view character, and I think the seeds of that are in this part. I still can't decide if that's stupid or brilliant. It's such a fine line, y'know.
When we inherited the house, it was all dust and dropcloths, its age obvious with every choking breath we drew. Connie opened all the windows, and most of them haven't been closed since.
He also began what I suppose is best described as a project, turning the house into something only he could envision. He tamed the garden; I helped him discover its paths and its plan. But once I began to spend my days in classes, the straight walks I'd found with him turned into mazes. Lately he has worked inside the house, painting one of the corner rooms on the second floor.
"What will you do when it's finished?"
Connell shakes his hair out of his eyes, a streak of cerulean on his cheek making him seem painted for war. "It will never be finished."
But I know the house as it will be is already a complete picture in his mind. There will be an end to this madness of activity, and every day fills in a little more of the canvas stretched in his mind.
"Someday," I say, and leave, not because I have said all I want, but because sometimes you have to try to speak his language, and it is made more of silences than words. Though he is my twin, our minds seldom have a common ground. I don't know why he became himself and I me. Could I have been that way too, shadows and tongues? Perhaps. My mother once told me that when we were little we spoke our own language together before we knew how to make adults understand us. I wonder if that has not been Connell's path all along, the refinement of a speech for communicating with no one but himself.
It is still awfully "Look at how mysterious he is!!!1!"
Hmm, what can I torture you with next week? Ooh OOH! I once wrote this space-opera romance thing. With a heroine who was sekritly some variety of Chosen One, and a hero who was an outlaw but really a freedom fighter, and a wedding-day abduction. Oh, my babies. It tried so hard; bless its little heart. I seem to remember writing along in it and realizing even at the time that it was silly, and I jotted down something like "She was intensely annoyed at being locked into her cabin, but even more so by the fact that she was still in her damn wedding dress." :D
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Date: 2008-03-10 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 08:49 pm (UTC)