A Silent World

She traced her steps across the weathered staircase, her hand firmly clutching the handrail. With every other step, the floor bellowed under the pressure, giving the impression that it was about to cave in. It was an old structure standing fast for over a century now, with none to tend to its needs. Once, it would have been called a ship -a warship rather- but such a concept was foreign to her, home that’s what it was, nothing more, nothing less. Soon, she reached the deck, an endless sea of sand expanded over the horizon, in all directions. Her tired gaze was fixed upon the vast nothingness, her mind going adrift, pondering of what came before. She’d read in books about the world of the old, the blue oceans, the green forests and the white mountains, yet the only colours she knew were those of rusted gray and faded gold. Her trance was abruptly brought to an end. An earthquake violently jerked the ship and the massive turret, previously, firmly affixed to its emplacement, collapsed right through the deck. In that short moment a tear escaped her eye and slid down across her cheek, for she knew that she’d have to move on, to find a new home.  It signified that the steel construct was nearing its end, and no more would she feel safe within its thick walls, although safety had long since lost its meaning. Yet it would not be quite right to blame that fleeting drop on this incident alone.

She started bawling like a baby, rather unusual for her to react in such an excessive manner. She had already survived most hardships this world had to offer and few things would seem to faze her. The girl sat on the hardwood floor, her eyes still bitter waterfalls. She opened her backpack and rummaged through it for the book. Its pages would provide her comfort, they always did, whenever she felt scared and alone, something quite frequent as of late. Oftentimes, the pages would disintegrate in her hands, time had not treated the book well, but in its faded pictures she would find warmth and shelter. And so she did. She lay on her side, using her backpack as a pillow. Page by page she was slowly sucked in the little picturesque world unfolding before her. No more than five minutes had passed before she was fast asleep. 

She woke up around midnight -in this world where time had lost all meaning- while the sunlight tenderly glazed the sand dunes. The hellscape mirrored the ocean, as she’d seen it in her books. She placed the book, its pages murky from her tears, in her backpack and got up. After some light stretching, she headed inside. It was pitch black, power had long since gone out. She shuddered as the darkness engulfed her, the temperature dropped sharply inside the ship, a welcome change from the heat she’d grown so used to. As she navigated the dark corridors, the ship let out a deep groan, as if the rusted construct yearned for times past. She placed her hand, gently, on the wall, in a vain attempt to sooth its anguish. Soon, she’d be all alone amidst a sea of sand, she had to cherish every moment here. She didn’t stay inside for long, any sense of safety the ship once provided was lost in the earthquake earlier.

She sat at the very edge of the deck; her legs dangling over the void. There once was a time where she’d dread such heights, nowadays sitting there had become a habit. Far in the distance you could make out the moon, peering over the dunes, quite the unusual sight. A light breeze grazed her skin, her white dress -torn and patched- danced at its tune. Her gaze -devoid of emotion- scanned the desert, searching desperately for something, anything.  Yet she knew, no matter how hard she tried to make herself believe otherwise, she knew that she was all alone on this barren rock, floating amidst space. There was none else, not anymore. She rose -still standing at the edge- and jumped. The scorching sand burning her bare feet. Under the ever-watchful eye of the sun, she set upon her journey.

Reviews

[JayG]

Edit, edit, edit.

• She traced her steps across the weathered staircase, her hand firmly clutching the handrail.

You can retrace your steps, only because you have completed tracing them, but she’s actively in the process, so past tense doesn't work.

You have her going across, which is from side to side, not up or down. And how wide is a staircase? You later say it’s on a warship, and their steps aren’t all that wide. An of course, having her holding the handrail is at war with her going across the steps. But of more importance, why does the reader care, or need to know that someone we know nothing about, in an unknown place is holding tight to a handrail if they don’t know why she should? You know the stair is shaky, so it makes sense, but the reader doesn't. Without context the words hold no meaning.

And that doesn’t take into account that the reader doesn’t know anything about the “she” but that she’s not important enough to have a name. If the reader is to make sense of the story they must be able to build a mental picture either as, or before the action happens, not after it’s too late. So place her, first. And make the reader care about her, not have a list of things she does and you report.

• With every other step, the floor bellowed under the pressure, giving the impression that it was about to cave in.

The word you actually wanted is “bellied,” or better yet, sagged. Bellow is a loud animal sound. And...it only happens on every OTHER step? That makes no sense.

You say that the movement gave the impression it was about to collapse. To whom? You’re not there. We know of no one but her who is. If she has that impression and still goes on, she’s obviously a fool. So who is making all those external observations, and why doesn’t she ask them who they are?

My point? Because you’re trying to TELL the reader a story, by transcribing yourself performing as a storyteller, you’re caught in an impossible situation:

In all the world, only you know the emotion to place into the voice of the narrator. So all the reader gets is dispassionate outside observer whose voice they can’t hear and whose performance they can’t see, talking about things meaningful only to themself. You know where we are in time and space. So does she. Shouldn't the ones you wrote it for know? The reader doesn’t know what planet we’re on. where we are on it, what’s going on, or why.

You know who she is, her backstory, why she’s there, and what she expects to happen.You know if she’s going up or down the stairs and where she’s coming from. The reader has not a clue. You talk about things you visualize in your mind without placing that image into the reader’s mind. So when you say, “Soon, she reached the deck, an endless sea of sand expanded over the horizon, in all directions.” You just told the reader that the sand is the deck. Not what you meant, but it is what you said, and lacking all context, what other meaning is the reader to take?

In short, you’re using the approach to writing that we all perfect in our school days by writing endless numbers of reports and essays—nonfiction. And you can’t learn to write fiction by writing nonfiction. Although we don’t realize it, we leave school exactly as ready to write fiction as to successfully remove an appendix.

Remember, for all of you life, every book you’ve chosen was published, which means it was written with the skills of the profession, and selected for publication based on how well those skills were used. It would be nice if by reading fiction we learned to write it. But does eating make a chef of us?

The answer? Simple: Add the skills the pros take for granted to those you were given in school. Will that be easy? Of course not. Any profession takes time, study, and perseverance to learn. They offer four year majors in Fiction-Writing in college, and you have to assume that at least some of the knowledge that education provides is necessary. Right?

But…while learning to do something you enjoy doing can be called work, it's hardly "labor." And the practice we do is writing stories. So dig it. The local library’s fiction-writing section is a huge resource. And for what it may be worth, the single best book I’ve found on writing technique is available for download, free, from the address below this paragraph. Copy/paste it into the URL address window at the top of any Internet page and hit return.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

For a kind of overview of the techniques in it, and others on writing, the articles in my WordPress writing blog are meant to provide that (address at the bottom).

Will the book make a pro of you? No. That’s your job. But it will give you the knowledge, the tools, and the way to do that if it’s in you.

So I know this was lousy news, and not what you were hoping to see. But since you can’t fix the problem you don’t see as being one, or use the tool you don’t know exists, I figured that sinc the knowledge is necessary, you’d want to know. And in writing, as in everything else, it’s all in the becoming.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

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