Rain One Night

An emotional ghost story and lost love.

Rain One Night

Tabatha Rain Anderson sits on her couch, the TV on, but she does not watch it. She watches him whom stands at the window looking out at the night’s blackness. She catches glimpses of the sheets of rain, which drenches the backyard, past him. She smiles, then lightning flashes and her smile is gone; in its place is a grimace of fear. For just a moment she thought she could see right through him into the night and a black fluid mass where his heart should be.

He, Andrew Lee Anderson, her husband of seven years, turns and tells her; “Come on, let’s go play in the rain.”

“Are you crazy, Lee; it’s lightening.”

“Crazy? Maybe, but I’ve been counting between flashes and thunder; the storm’s moving away. Come, Rain, be crazy with me.”

His boyish smile is contagious pushing aside her ominous feeling and finds herself standing beside him looking out at the rain. Holding his hand she swears it feels too cold, but the mental verbalization of the thought alone is enough for her body to answer back; no, can’t you tell he is warm, it was you who was cold with unfounded fear. But she can’t shake off the lingering image the lightening gave her.

Smiling up at him, and he down at her, she desires to kiss him, but a new flask of lightening inverts her vision of his face and replaces it with a deathly skull of white and long shadows. And the shadow grins with malice down at her. She closes her eyes, but the image is burnt into her memory, and she shivers.

Lee, misinterpreting this as the chills wraps his arms around her and hugs her close with a kiss. The taste of freshly dug grave sod coats her tongue and his warm breath is a miasma of graveyard fog; but her fear freezes her to the kiss.

Every September 18^th she lives through this kiss but can’t bring herself to change the events; she misses Lee too much to give him up for good. She thinks; I am to give in now, and agree to go out in the rain, as a tear rolls down her cheek.

Her thoughts have caused her to miss his playful pleading to just go out in the rain and have some fun. she’s heard it every year and knows his argument by heart, so she plays her part and tells him that sure; a little water’s never hurt anyone.

He takes her hand and pulls her outside. She stops, as always, just under the awning; he continues a few more steps onto the grass and into the rain. He turns when he realizes her hand is no longer in his.

Tears, not rain, runs unabated down her cheeks. He opens his mouth to tease her to come out into the rain, but it never comes out; it never does. Instead, he grips his left arm and collapses to the wet grass.

She knows he will be dead before she runs the two strides to his body, but, like every night once a year for seven years since that first year of their marriage and that real cursed night, she hugs his head to her chest, not caring that water soaks her shorts, and cries.

They remain like that for an hour until the rain subsides and he is gone. She will never let him go, even if she can only have this one night a year. Fear slaps her; what would happen if it ever didn’t rain on their night. She prays to whatever god gives her this anniversary gift that it always rains.

Reviews

[JayG]

Well, you did say you were here to improve, so…

• Tabatha Rain Anderson sits on her couch, the TV on, but she does not watch it.

With this line, you tell the reader that this isn't a story, as readers view that. It’s a transcription of you telling the story aloud, with all the limitations of that medium but none of the advantages.

1. Because a storyteller is on stage alone, without either actors or stage dressing, the reader can’t see the things that would provide ambiance in the time of an eyeblink, were it a film. So: Where we are in time and space is missing. Who is she as a person, so far as age, appearance, mood, dress, expression, and situation? Unknown.

For you, who knows all that before you begin reading, and hold a mental image of the place, it works. But the reader lacks all context to make the words meaningful, for reasons I’ll get to. Suffice to say that it’s not related to how well you write, or talent.

2. Because you can’t take the part of the actors, but must talk ABOUT them when in stage, you must provide the emotional component of the story via your performance. So every facial expression change, every gesture, pause for breath, eye movement, and body-language is significant, because your performance substitutes for that of the actors. Added to that is the emotion you place in your voice, your changes in intensity and tempo, and the other tricks. But….does any of your performance make it to the page? No. Does your intent get to the reader? No. So what you’re giving the reader is a storyteller’s script, minus the stage directions.

But because all that missing information is there when you read, it works perfectly…for you. And because it does, you won’t notice the problem.

One way around that is an editing step where you have your computer read it to you.

Next, you’re using present tense in hope of making the story more immediate. But does it? If I change the line to, “Tabatha Rain Anderson sat on her couch with the TV on, but wasn’t watching it,” is there the smallest change? No. Someone not in the story or on the scene is still talking to the reader about what she’s doing. But that’s a report. Tabatha isn't thinking that she's not watching the TV, you are. But it's her story, so, why not let HER live it, as the reader's avatar.

And that brings us to the why of it, a problem that hits us all when we turn to fiction: We think we learned how to write in school. But we learned only one approach to writing, fact-based and author-centric. Using those skills for fiction we tell the reader about events, just as we did for all the reports and essays we were assigned—as they trained us in the writing skills employers require: nonfiction.

But do we read fiction to find out what happened? Hell no! We read fiction to LIVE the story, as-the-protagonist, and in real-time.

Think about it. using the skills you were taught, you told the reader what she’s NOT doing. Who cares? You might as well have told the reader that she wasn’t farting, so far as its importance to the story. It’s what she IS doing, and what makes her do it that matters.

You’re also trying to be literary, with “She watches him whom stands at the window looking out at the night’s blackness.” Forgetting that it’s “he who,” since the reader doesn’t know the smallest thing about her, the line has no context. And remember, fixing that later helps not at all, because there is no second first-impression.

Because we don’t realize that there are other approaches to writing, we never look for them, and forget that professional knowledge is acquired in addition to the skills of school. In fact, we miss the single most important thing about fiction-writing, the goal.

E. L. Doctorow but it brilliantly with: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

Can we truly understand why the protagonist does and says what they do if we don’t understand, and even misunderstand, the situation as the protagonist does? Remember, we read about everything that happens BEFORE the protagonist reacts, and so, will react before the protagonist. Given that, don’t we want to calibrate the reader’s understanding to that of the protagonist, so they react as that character is about to?

We do, but did any teacher ever point that out? Of course not, because their job was to ready you for the needs of employment, where the skills of report-writing are what we need.

But never realizing that, and because our writing always works for us, we never notice a problem.

The fix? Dig into the tricks the pros take for granted, practice them by using them till they’re as intuitive as the skills we get in school. Do that and the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun, because we’re forced to live the scene in real-time as the protagonist—which takes daydreaming to a whole new level. Your protagonist becomes your co-writer, whispering warnings and suggestions in your ear.

And then, one day, when you tell the protagonist to do something necessary to the plot, they’ll straighten up, cross their arms, glare at you and say, “Me do that? With the personality and background you’ve given me? Hell no. That’s not me. Given my resources, needs, and personality, I would…”

And until they do that—and I mean it literally—they aren’t real to either you or the reader.

Where do you start? As I see it, a few books on the basics is an excellent way. You work when you have the time, and at your own pace. There’s no pressure, and, no tests. What’s not to love?

Personally? I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found, to date, at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Try a few chapters. I think you’ll be glad you did.

So…I know this is pretty far from what you hoped to hear. I also know how hard such news is to take. I’ve been there a time or three. But, we’ll not address the problem we don’t see as being one, so I thought you would want to know.

Such news stings, I know, but it’s something we all face, so it’s more a rite-of-passage than a disaster—one every successful writer faced and overcame. So don’t let it throw you. Writing isn’t a destination, it’s a lifetime journey. So, hang in there, and keep on writing.

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