Afraid Of The Dark

A Story by ayesha cullen

The inevitable was near...

It had hit her hard when she first met him. The rosy patterns of life those days shrouded her, and her ways of ennobling him was a thing of envy for the rest. Never an ounce did she care, or he. In days, all those love songs and romantic dialogues, which she had previously despised, made sense to her. She often caught herself singing the melodious tune of romance; her mind losing control to her heart, and the silly heart racing faster than the drumbeats of Beatles when she saw him, talked to him, and felt him. Those were moments she always had pined for, and it was all rainbows and sunshine. She loved him. And soon, she became obsessed with him. His world revolved around her, but, he was the center of her world.

To her, he was a miracle made of unique mud and genius blood. His deep, commanding, and raspy voice she always longed to hear. It almost always turned her on, and she would lustily coax him into talking to her. She loved the way her body reacted to his voice: perked up and turned on at the right places. His innocent but mischievous eyes she loved to look at, and they drowned her deep inside them, possessing her, and capturing her. She loved being possessed by him. He was a dark soul, with a dangerous personality that had attracted her to him at the very onset. There was something uncanny, something mysterious about him that she couldn't help getting drawn to. It fuelled her hormones and she wanted it to be that way. She loved unveiling him in bits and pieces, trying to uncoil him each day, and it thrilled her beyond measure to discover a new trait every time she did.

He loved it, too. He tried to tease her, and tantalize her. He knew he did wonders to her body and soul, and they loved being that way. She knew he was a tough nut to crack, and had demons hidden inside, but she embraced him, nonetheless. It was magical, and she couldn't help it. She wanted him bad. She had bared her soul to him, and wanted him to take possession of it. She wanted him deep within her, and inside her; a wild, atavistic avatar he manifested was the only thing she always craved for. If nothing else, they had one thing to keep them bonded together and strong: their passion and hunger for sex. They made love fast and furious everyday, and there was no scope of an external being. They loved each other, madly and deeply. Their velvety romance was as furious and passionate as the mountain lion: untouched but tempting. They loved with an intense ferocity, and it was thought to be eternal.

She ached for him when he wasn't around. She knew she was the one who had won him, and the only witness to his strengths and vulnerabilities. He had a vulnerable side too, yes, but he tried his best to keep it away from the world, except her. She could often see right through him, which enticed her, but other times, he was as obscure as the poems of Sylvia Plath, unearthing which would quite take a toll on you. She found it interesting. She thought his personality was multidimensional and had left it to people (herself included) to make domains of their own and pull out myriad of interpretations. It thrilled her as much as it scared her. He was tempting, yet, he was whimsical. His whims and fancies had often incurred her scars, but she wore them like an ornament of pride and valour, and her symbol of love. It never dawned upon her that these scars would weigh heavy on her one day enough to suffocate her under its pressure.

In a sudden moment where life had taken an unexpected turn, she found him going away from her. He had long closed the door of love to his soul, and kept on hanging by a mere thread of lust. She saw it, but she had let quiet settle around her. She thought lust was enough to keep them going. It did. Until the other night. Everything stopped. It was dark, but she was afraid of it. It was dangerous, but she detested it. She found herself to be standing on a pulse of an outgrown bereavement, and it all came crashing down upon her. The scars she was once proud of, had shattered her. There was an explosion. A heavy one. It shone bright like meteors in the night sky before finally turning into ash. Into nothing.

It hit her hard once more, albeit, in a different context. It was all over for them. For her. She perused the events one evening, sitting on her chair, and it all became clear. They were never meant to be together. They fought with equal passion as they made love, and that had caved in on her in ways unexpected. It was difficult for her to move on. He had taught her a lot of things, but never did he teach her how to survive without him. She thought she was free, but for the first time in history, the freedom didn't take her to the valley of rainbows. She loved being caged. She was used to it. She never wanted to let out. The turn of events left her appalled, but she swallowed the bite of reality and decided to move on.

© 2017 ayesha cullen

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JayG

Take a deep breath, this may sting. 😳 But you did ask...

• It had hit her hard when she first met him.

Here’s where the problems start. Clearly, we are not with the character. Someone we can neither hear nor see is giving us an info-dump of backstory. So your story opens with history? Why would you open the story with what happened before the story opens. If it matters all that much start there. Story happens, it’s not talked about.

As they read this, the reader, who arrived with mild curiosity, is deciding if they want to commit to reading the story. But instead of story they get 918 words of someone they don’t know talking about someone they haven’t been made to want to know. That’s more than four standard manuscript pages of background information. The actual story has yet to begin. But the average reader makes a buy or put the book back on the shelf in three pages or less. As So Stein puts it,

“Each Friday afternoon at three, while other students decamped for their homes, the lights were on in the Magpie tower high above the rectangle of the school. There Wilmer Stone met with Richard Avedon, then a poet, who became one of the most famous photographers in the world, the editor Emile Capouya, Jimmy Baldwin, myself, and a few others whose names hide behind the scrim of time. What went on in that tower was excruciatingly painful. Wilmer Stone read our stories to us in a monotone as if he were reading from the pages of a phone directory. What we learned with each stab of pain was that the words themselves and not the inflections supplied by the reader had to carry the emotion of the story.

Today I still hear the metronome of Wilmer Stone’s voice, and counsel my students to have their drafts read to them by the friend who has the least talent for acting and is capable of reading words as if they had no meaning.”

I know this seems harsh, but think about it. Do you personally own a single history book, bought to read as entertainment? Do any of your friends have one?

History informs. It’s immutable, because it’s already happened, and has no uncertainty. The reader’s not with the character, facing their problems as they happen, they’re reading a synopsis, told in a voice devoid of all emotion. It’s fact-based and author-centric.

But readers come to us seeking excitement, not facts. They want the uncertainty that makes them WANT to turn the page to see what happens as a result of what the protagonist just did or said. They want writing that’s character-centric and emotion-based.

Look at your second line: “The rosy patterns of life those days shrouded her, and her ways of ennobling him was a thing of envy for the rest.” At this point the reader doesn’t know where they are in time and space. They don’t know whose skin they’re wearing. And they have no clue of what’s going on in the opening scene. They have no access to your intent of presenting this information or why it matters to the story. And because you’re not there to ask, they can only take the meaning the words suggest to THEM, based on THEIR background. Have your computer read it aloud to hear what the reader “hears” as they read.

Added to that, they’re probably of a different age and social group. They probably have different background and social biases. And there’s a 50/50 chance they have a different gender biases. Given that, what can “rosy patterns of life,” mean to them? How can a happy life shroud someone? And, when were “those days?” We don’t even know what PLANET we’re on as this opens.

You know all that. So when you read, knowing the background, the location, and everything else, the words make perfect sense. But only you have that data, so…

Here’s the deal: It’s not a matter of talent or writing skill. It’s that in our schooldays we learn only nonfiction report writing skills because we’re not learning the profession of fiction writer, we’re learning a set of general skills to use on the job and in life—writing whose goal is to explain and inform, not entertain.

For fiction everything changes. The goal is to entertain the reader by giving them an emotional experience. The events that make up the plot are incidental. It’s the effect of the events on the protagonist that matters. It’s their struggle to control their environment. And what matters even more is making the reader feel as if they’re living the story, moent-by-moment. In the words of E. L. Doctorow, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” At the moment you’re focused on the rain, not making the reader’s share the experience with the protagonist. But that’s the learned part of writing, and fixable.

I won’t kid you, it’s not easy to learn and perfect an entirely different way of approaching the act of writing a story. It takes time, study, and practice. But, the good news is that if you’re meant to be a writer, the learning will be like going backstage at the theater.

A great place to begin is the fiction writing section of the library. Lots of help to be had there. My personal recommendation is to pick up a copy of Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a warm easy read, like talking with Deb about writing. But read it slowly, with plenty of time spent thinking about each new point, and practicing it enough that you won’t just learn it, nod in understanding, and forget you saw it a week later.

And here’s the good news. Once you do master it, you’ll love the difference in the realism of the story.

For a kind of overview of the issues she covers, you might poke around in the articles in my writing blog. They’re meant to give the hopeful writer a feel for the issues they need more knowledge on.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

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

Posted 5 Years Ago

Take a deep breath, this may sting.  😳 But you did ask...

• It had hit her hard when she first met him.

Here’s where the problems start. Clearly, we are not with the character. Someone we can neither hear nor see is giving us an info-dump of backstory. So your story opens with history? Why would you open the story with what happened before the story opens. If it matters all that much start there. Story happens, it’s not talked about.

As they read this, the reader, who arrived with mild curiosity, is deciding if they want to commit to reading the story. But instead of story they get 918 words of someone they don’t know talking about someone they haven’t been made to want to know. That’s more than four standard manuscript pages of background information. The actual story has yet to begin. But the average reader makes a buy or put the book back on the shelf in three pages or less. As So Stein puts it,

“Each Friday afternoon at three, while other students decamped for their homes, the lights were on in the Magpie tower high above the rectangle of the school. There Wilmer Stone met with Richard Avedon, then a poet, who became one of the most famous photographers in the world, the editor Emile Capouya, Jimmy Baldwin, myself, and a few others whose names hide behind the scrim of time. What went on in that tower was excruciatingly painful. Wilmer Stone read our stories to us in a monotone as if he were reading from the pages of a phone directory. What we learned with each stab of pain was that the words themselves and not the inflections supplied by the reader had to carry the emotion of the story.

Today I still hear the metronome of Wilmer Stone’s voice, and counsel my students to have their drafts read to them by the friend who has the least talent for acting and is capable of reading words as if they had no meaning.”

I know this seems harsh, but think about it. Do you personally own a single history book, bought to read as entertainment? Do any of your friends have one?

History informs. It’s immutable, because it’s already happened, and has no uncertainty. The reader’s not with the character, facing their problems as they happen, they’re reading a synopsis, told in a voice devoid of all emotion. It’s fact-based and author-centric.

But readers come to us seeking excitement, not facts. They want the uncertainty that makes them WANT to turn the page to see what happens as a result of what the protagonist just did or said. They want writing that’s character-centric and emotion-based.

Look at your second line: “The rosy patterns of life those days shrouded her, and her ways of ennobling him was a thing of envy for the rest.” At this point the reader doesn’t know where they are in time and space. They don’t know whose skin they’re wearing. And they have no clue of what’s going on in the opening scene. They have no access to your intent of presenting this information or why it matters to the story. And because you’re not there to ask, they can only take the meaning the words suggest to THEM, based on THEIR background. Have your computer read it aloud to hear what the reader “hears” as they read.

Added to that, they’re probably of a different age and social group. They probably have different background and social biases. And there’s a 50/50 chance they have a different gender biases. Given that, what can “rosy patterns of life,” mean to them? How can a happy life shroud someone? And, when were “those days?” We don’t even know what PLANET we’re on as this opens.

You know all that. So when you read, knowing the background, the location, and everything else, the words make perfect sense. But only you have that data, so…

Here’s the deal: It’s not a matter of talent or writing skill. It’s that in our schooldays we learn only nonfiction report writing skills because we’re not learning the profession of fiction writer, we’re learning a set of general skills to use on the job and in life—writing whose goal is to explain and inform, not entertain.

For fiction everything changes. The goal is to entertain the reader by giving them an emotional experience. The events that make up the plot are incidental. It’s the effect of the events on the protagonist that matters. It’s their struggle to control their environment. And what matters even more is making the reader feel as if they’re living the story, moent-by-moment. In the words of E. L. Doctorow, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” At the moment you’re focused on the rain, not making the reader’s share the experience with the protagonist. But that’s the learned part of writing, and fixable.

I won’t kid you, it’s not easy to learn and perfect an entirely different way of approaching the act of writing a story. It takes time, study, and practice. But, the good news is that if you’re meant to be a writer, the learning will be like going backstage at the theater.

A great place to begin is the fiction writing section of the library. Lots of help to be had there. My personal recommendation is to pick up a copy of Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a warm easy read, like talking with Deb about writing. But read it slowly, with plenty of time spent thinking about each new point, and practicing it enough that you won’t just learn it, nod in understanding, and forget you saw it a week later.

And here’s the good news. Once you do master it, you’ll love the difference in the realism of the story.

For a kind of overview of the issues she covers, you might poke around in the articles in my writing blog. They’re meant to give the hopeful writer a feel for the issues they need more knowledge on.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

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

Rating /100

emmajoy

Dramatic, passionate writing in language truly fine - and more. Such devotion, such bliss, such sin and kiss. You use words carefully yet flow your tale with great ease.. or so it seems.

Don't know how or why but felt something would happen... you eased into it with immense care as someone who knows how to adapt emotions to suit time and place. Quite beautiul.