Soldevia, city of the gods

For a self insert story written when I was eighteen - I think it turned out okay.

“You have half an hour to get the building clear before my bombs go off.” The line clicks off. I don't f*****g get payed enough for this, the Walmart receptionist thinks. He tries to recall if he was ever trained on bomb threats. He thinks he's supposed to keep the caller talking. To late for that. Write down exactly what was said. Write down their phone number. Got it.  Identify background noises. None. Was the caller male or female? Male. How old did they sound? Young. Don’t pull a fire alarm that might actually detonate the bomb. Contact your manager. The receptionist heads up the stairs.

I don't f*****g get payed enough for this, the Walmart manager thinks as he switches on the loud speakers. Half an hour before the explosion, it’ll be twenty-five minutes by now. Keep calm. We don’t want anyone getting hurt and suing later. He takes a deep breath.

“We are evacuating the building. This is a real emergency. Everyone please remain calm, and move slowly towards the front entrance. We have twenty-five minutes. Thank you for your cooperation.”  That was all right. Now inform the authorities. No cell phones, which might detonate the bomb. A landline ought to be fine. Twenty five minutes later most of the shoppers have scattered across the street to the Target, or back to their cars. A few have stayed to watch, along with the employees who have been forcibly clocked out while they wait to get back to work.

Several patrol cars are parked right outside. They’ll search the building until just before it’s supposed to blow. The bomb squad comes out and jump in their cars. They keep talking, unconcerned. Laughing, joking. "Tick tick boom" one of them says gesturing at the building. They all laugh and one waves at the manager, indicating that it's a false alarm. Then the rumbling begins. A circle rips around the Walmart like a blade slicing through asphalt. Heat shimmers around the building. The windows turn molten, and made liquid, pour down onto the foundation. The steel melts and follows. The circle around the store rises twenty feet above the parking lot and then slams back down, flattening the building in an earsplitting "Thwunk." Then silence. ". . . Tick tick boom." the man from the bomb squad whispers, half awe, and half explicative. "I don't f*****g get payed enough for this," the manager finally voices.

  *                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *                          

“Sir.” The Mayor turned to see his secretary holding some papers. He could tell from her expression it was something bad.

“Another one just blew up ------ Here’s the report.”

“Don’t flinch like that” He snapped, “it’s not your fault this is going on.”

“Yes sir.” she flinched. He made a conscious effort to calm down. Why? Why was this happening? The police investigation was drawing a blank. When the second threat came in someone had the forethought to download all the information on the security cameras, and they’d all been intensively scanned to no result. The pattern was obvious. Someone enjoyed blowing up big box stores. They would call, the store would evacuate, and the place would explode. There would be no casualties, only a lot of property damage.

The weak link should have been the phone the bomber used to give the warning, but it wasn’t. All of the cell phones had been bought with Wal-Mart’s corporate credit number and delivered to the first store to blow up. Wal-Mart had never gotten the shipment, but in the excitement of the explosion no one had noticed until they tracked the number down. The person was calling in from a different place each time, and took out the battery after they had used it. GPS couldn’t track a phone without a battery. They used a different phone each time. There had been thirty in the shipment. How many chain stores were there in Sequim? He wondered what the mystery bomber would do when he ran out of phones.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” The Secretary curtsied. This wasn’t his job. His job was to assure the public that everything was under control. His job was to lie through his teeth that everything was all right. That the police had a chance. His job was to tell people to do things they had no chance of doing. This bomber was too clever. How did he even get the money to buy all those bombs? None of the experts had ever seen an explosion like this before, and they said it looked like the kind of thing in a science fiction movie. Maybe that was it. Aliens were exploding chain stores in Sequim. If nothing else it might increase tourist revenue.

“Sir?”

“No thank you Lisa - I just need to brood for a while.” Why was this happening on his watch? It felt like something was building, something big. Like the chain bomber had some master plan and exploding gigantic stores was only one small piece. Maybe he should start an investigation on all billionaires who like to eat organic food. The police were already looking into the environmentalist angle. Unfortunately there were simply too many greenies to convict them all. He sighed. This was going to be a long week.

*                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *                        

I am running. I am trying to catch time. Every week as I wait for the bus home I explore Sequim a little more. The sky in Sequim is the most miraculous sky I have ever seen in all the places I have ever been, but the buildings are crude and ugly. I wander trying to find gaps and open spaces. I gaze at the moon and stars and clouds from open rooftops. Tonight it was so beautiful that I became entranced in its glory. I began to understand why the ancients looked up at the heavens and saw the gods. I saw them then in the movements of the clouds and the positions of the stars. I lost track of time. This bus is the last bus home and if I miss it I will be stranded here. I am running now. I am trying to catch time.

My school bag isn’t made for running. If I threw it aside I could definitely make the bus, but I’m not willing to risk a hundred and twenty dollars and a decent grade worth of textbooks. I would rather miss the bus. I’m so thirsty though. I’ve been running for ten minutes and my lungs are already hurting. It’s this damn backpack. Water, water, water, water - the thought slams through my brain as I run. I have to make this bus. I shortcut through someone’s yard. I leap fences. I dodge into a long brick alley I’ve never seen before. I run. Slam! Into something waist high and double over in pain.

Perhaps I blacked out. It is a short lapse as the doubling plunges my head into freezing water. My head jerks up and I shake the water out of my bangs like a dog. I pause, as I always do when faced with difficulty. My hands begin to explore this unseen foe looking for a way around it. I seem to have run into an old well. It’s got water all the way to the top. The sides are engraved with something, words perhaps, or maybe pictures. I can’t see in the dark. I hear a deep throbbing heartbeat, it must be my own. I make a quick mental note to return to this place, and dip my head and drink three deep gulps. It is after all a well, and I am very thirsty. The water ought to be clean. It is. It tastes good, sweet, clear. I vault over the well and start running.

As my foot touches the ground I feel the power. Power is coursing through my veins like liquid fire, and my fingers tingle with unfocussed might. My mouth burns with the urge to sing a glory that I had not known I had. This is not some simple mood, this is something different, something awe inspiring, something I cannot refuse. My eyes blaze and for a moment I cannot see. Then my body shudders as the power ripples, down, down, down, and then up again. Like a waterfall, it billows and booms. I am nothing compared to this power, and some instinct born of ancient man knows this fact. My feet have reached the end of the alley. My voice utters a single unknown word. The world goes still.

You do not know how much sound is in the world until it is devoid of sound. Cars hum, moan and mutter, the ear blocks out so many sounds. It ignores the slow sinking sound of buildings into the earth. It ignores the sound of electricity running through the lines, and humming into houses. It ignores the barking dogs and sound of voices so far off that your ears filter them out to focus on what is close. As the sound of my voice fades there is so much silence I cannot bare it. Not even the heartbeat of the earth pounds beneath my feet, though I think I feel it pounding in my chest.

My feet pound against the earth as I run. Something is wrong, but I still have a bus to catch. As I run I see someone standing motionless on the street. I murmur a greeting. Silence. As I arrive at the bus stop, something shifts again. The sounds slowly start returning. The bus pulls in, I look at my clock, it should be leaving about now. I board the bus slowly the warmth of the bus is stifling against the heat of my body, my heart is pumping heat to help me run, and my veins still burn with some inner fire.

As I settle down on my seat I finally have time to look inward. My torpid brain begins to comprehend that something magical has just occurred. Fantasy stories begin to meander through my mind. I take a deep breath in and sense inside. I have a well of power that is just beginning to fade away. I have a second heartbeat, one that belongs to the earth, which augments my own. I feel its capacity for the miraculous. I know I have to act fast, before this second heartbeat fades back into the earth.

I’ve played this through in my head enough, what child hasn’t? I know to be very careful. To wish big, but not so big that I go beyond the capacity of whatever magic this is. I want to know how this magic works, but I want something lasting, something amazing. Something I can use to make the world a better place. I consider wishing to know how everything works.  That could be dangerous. I could get swamped in information that I can’t process. I begin.

I want enough all-purpose mental capacity to be able to comprehend the entire world. I feel something shift. My vision shifts. My mind is moving snakelike in my head. My vision clears as it has never cleared before. Everything I see I understand. I know what makes gravity work the way it does. I know what each person is thinking and why they think it. I know what sort of power I have, and how I got it. I know my limits. I know what I am capable of, and I still have a vast well of mental energy available to designate to any thoughts I desire.

My greatest desire at this moment is to comprehend the world in its entirety. I want all the data. I have all the data. I have mind enough to comprehend it all at once if I choose. My mind darts massively towards the next thing I need to do. This energy I drank is fading. I use the last piece to give an item the power to give powers. There’s a butterfly brooch in my backpack. With the energy I have, I create a link between this item’s power and the oil reserve. That should give me enough power to work with, to change matter takes energy, it does not matter where the energy comes from, simply that it is expended. Destroyed. The earth doesn’t have the energy to extend her heartbeat any longer. The magic of the well fades and is gone.

*                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *                    

My dreams that night were amazing. A mind as massive as the one I held, dreams things that no normal mind can. Even in that first night I was formulating in its entirety the plan that would make one of my long standing fantasies a reality. I wanted to build the city of the gods. It would be called Soldevia, and it would be nestled in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, with mount Olympus not more than thirty miles off. The city would contain the magic well I had stumbled on. It would protect it.

In the first few moments of my omniscience I began to realize that something was wrong. I had known before the change that the world was out of balance but now I knew the extent, and it frightened me. As I was harnessing energy to the butterfly brooch my massive mind was casting out for the source of this imbalance, sifting through the data of a million years, and it found it. The world had no gods.

My dreams that night took me back sixteen thousand years when the gods entered the world. The World let them in. They were a counterbalance to the extremes of her newest creation. Man, capable of killing his mother. The gods were her protectors, but they too could destroy her, and so she bound the existence of the gods to the existence of man. Man’s worship sustained the gods, and her hope was that this would keep her safe. My dreams that night were not pictures as a smaller mind might dream, but rather certainties. I knew what had taken place.

Three thousand years ago a single god, Jehovah god of the Jews, conceived of supremacy. His cult taught that he was the only God, and slowly the other gods began to fall. I watched as Christianity and Islam swathe massive empires, cleaving gods in their wake, Jehovah gaining power unheard of from the men who followed Him. I watched as a single God could not do what all the gods had been meant to do, and slowly the world consumed him, drawing on his power to restore its balance again and again until the once powerful God faded, as much a shade as the other gods who hung onto life by the belief of a few stubborn followers. Some gods hid in stories, others lived as fairies, and none could do the job they had been made to do.

I have always been religious. I have always been pagan. The goddess Leondea, goddess of goals, goddess of butterflies, has always been close to my heart, and the Earth had given me the last of her power that I might return the gods to glory. That first night my dreams led me to Soldevia. I would use the very money that had been made destroying the planet to fund my remaking of it. My goddess teaches toleration, but this, I decided, was no time to hold back. I would not kill anyone, but before I could remake the world I must first destroy it.

I awoke with a headache and the realization that my mind was too large for the body that contained it. Like software so massive it overheats the hardware that contains it, my mind was overheating my brain with its dreams. I grasped my brooch and drew the power to move matter. With my mind capable of tracking quarks, I remade my body to heal the damage. I took the liberties of adding extra muscle, and the autonomic reflexes of a dozen martial arts. I put in some carbon plating to slow bullets, and built in an automatic cleaning system that made me ageless. I could not die in this.

I would die in this if I did not act. My mind would continue to destroy my brain, and I needed my power for other things than continual reconstruction. So I set to work. Our bodies really are made of food. The grocer looked oddly at me as I bought the ingredients to build a dozen bodies. The Mortician didn’t notice when I took building blocks from the dead. I shaped a cavern, deep below the earth for my projects and began to build a brain that might hold my mind. I drew silicon, copper, iron, carbon, and zinc from the earth, and my mind set about shaping its new home.

Perhaps the first fully synchronized biological computer came to literal life that day. I linked it to my body, saved all the information of the world in a data chip so small it would put an ipod shuffle to shame. Whereupon I set about my second task. I built biorobotic servants. I imbued items with the power from my brooch. I built in systems and codes that would automatically come up when triggered - to build the basics of Soldevia when the time came.

I constructed energy sources so precise that they might as well have been perpetual. I began constructing the break in the seams of reality that would lead to the the gods return.  They would die unless I did this right, making man believe again. I wouldn't let them die. None would die by my hand or powers I swore, not even the animals. I constructed a device that sent a message too low and too high for humans to hear. It told the animal folk a simple message they would understand. Run, flee, quit this place.

I began to gather a group of the elite. I used untraceable methods to reach them. I awed them with my magic. I drew bright minds from across the world into my circle and taught them of the return of the gods. I prophesied Soldevia, I commanded that when it rose they come from the four corners of the earth and preach the words of their gods to the people. Most of the men and women I called never knew me. A few I let through.

Love is little more than knowledge of the interior of another’s soul. I knew everything on that first day, and in that moment I found myself madly in love with every man woman and child on this blessed earth. Love was not the only emotion. Most brought pity that a soul so bright had done so little, a few brought hatred, for these souls had destroyed and damaged wherever they when A few were greater even than this, for their souls sang the same song as my own, and their destinies were linked to mine. I invited these souls to join me, and they came. There were seven of them.

There is nothing that cannot be described in words, given enough of them. The entire world was words resting quietly inside my head. There is however, a point where it becomes impractical to use them. The friends whose souls sang with mine are such. I do not have enough pages to do them justice, so rather than risk saying too much I will keep to words that are inadequate but understandable. They were beautiful. I remember a time before the well, before my life was inextricably changed, before I had a mind that could describe a single human spark, when I caught a glimmer of like beauty.

I was nine and grounded at the time. I had been caught stealing, unable to tell the difference between what is mine and what is not. Darkness has always walked close to my path, and it is because of it that I have had to lean towards light. Sometimes too far. My little brain was working away at the problem of why it is bad to steal, and as a consequence I was surely that day.

I had been brought along as my mother toured an art museum. There was little I liked, as abstract painters stretched boundaries too far, and forgot the pattern the gods had raised. Beauty was absent here, and my little mind perceived that. I sulked to a bench and sat, waiting for it all to be over, and then, on an impulse, I looked up above where I was sitting and saw a painting that captured my imagination and my heart. Two boys lay beneath oak in golden light. They looked happy, at peace. I knew then why it is wrong to take what is not yours, and why sometimes it is even necessary to give without greed. It was the first time I ever heard the soul's song. Love.

Rosemary, Richard, Tanya, Rish, Josh, Ja’bar, and Arom. They sang from the first words exchanged, and even in those first words their song brought both inextricable joy and pain. A knowledge of all things gives a certain knowledge of the future as well. I knew what Soldevia required, and I knew why these seven had come. I walked a line between the future and the present, and I smiled as well as wept.  In a short time we came to know each other more intimately than most lovers know. Together we prepared and planned. My shock and awe campaign of blowing up chain stores coalesced into certainty of action only four months after my meeting with the well. Everything was in place. The beginning of the end before the beginning was at hand.

*                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *                         

“Sir.” The Mayor turned to see his secretary holding some papers. He could tell from her expression it was something bad. In fact judging by her pale she wasn’t just frightened of him, she was frightened of someone or something else as well. Her hands were trembling so wildly a paper fell from her grasp. She bent to retrieve it and repeated her query.

“Sir?”

“What is it.” His words were a monotone statement. Seven stores exploded in the last four months. What could be worse?

“He wants us to evacuate Clallam County east of the Elwha.” His secretary dipped her head apologetically. The Mayor knew whom she meant of course. Who else would make such an outrageous request? Who else would have the power to be taken seriously? He’d seen the footage. He suspected that this man really did have the technology to flatten the place. Two weeks before a McDonalds had been targeted. When the smoke had cleared a piece of the counter with a toy rubber ducky had remained. It was good to know that the bomber had a sense of humor anyway.

Four months ago the evacuation would have been impossible. Now, the Mayor began to see that everything else had just been demonstrations, just like the bomber had said during that first phone call. They had been designed to frighten the people enough that this ploy might actually work. At least it made the Mayor’s job that much easier. He sucked in a huge breath. His mind continued to run a rabbit’s pace.

“He said we have one week - and to please make sure everyone is out of the proscribed area at the desired time.” Our bomber is polite at least. The Mayor scowled.

“Call in the appropriate people. We need to design a decent evacuation.”

“Yes sir.” She seemed relieved he hadn’t yelled yet and scampered off. Strangely he didn’t feel like yelling. He felt as if all this was about to end soon. In fact it felt like a relief. He brushed off his jacket, straightened his shoulders, and began his slow meandering way down to the meeting hall.

The populace was in a collective state of shock. The nation had heard of course, on every news channel on the air. The army would be standing watch, looking for planes to shoot down. Satellites were closely surveying the area which was in full military lockdown.  They’d only had a little trouble with the evacuation. A few stubborn families, most of them with guns, had decided this was a government conspiracy to take their land and had decided to stay. The government had conspired to get them out, and in large part they had succeeded. Only one stubborn family remained.

“Why?” The question was collective on the world’s lips. A mystery man who blew stuff up evacuating a county in Washington? It made no sense.  “Why? The reporters speculated and writers readied their keyboards to write the first book on the event. Speculation ran rampant, but none moreso than the evacuees. Huge camps had been set up 100 feet from county border. Standard bomb evacuation procedure still had to be followed. This bomber was precise, and had powers past imagining. He might really be planning to blow up the entire county.

Other strange events had happened as well. All the animals were gone. Cats had fled, birds had flown. Swarms of insects had been seen, whole anthills marching one by one, to rebuild outside of the threatened area. Even those animals who were locked in cages had managed to get out. Bursts of brutish rage, and leaps higher than anything seen before, carried the beasts through locked doors and over barbed fences. Mice had broken their glass enclosures to run away in the night. The dogs stayed longest, whining and whimpering, often staying long enough to accompany their owners as they left. In the end even the dogs ran on the sixth day.

It was so strange this thing. The states held their collective breath, while the rest of the world looked on in idle interest. Everyone enjoyed America in an internal crisis. It seemed karma of sorts. Several religious groups also held their breaths. Perhaps this was the beginning of the end. Armageddon would begin with this maniac Lucifer incarnate, and then spread, plague-like across the land. Only the faithful would remain, and in the end Christ would descend and save them all. Little did they know how right they were to be.

*                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *                       

I begin by tampering with the satellites. It’s amazing how much a little matter moving can do. I mess with the digital input so they send back very different images from the ones they’re actually picking up. They are images from my massive dreams, of the time when the gods walked the earth, from a time when man still knew what to worship, and heart-moving images of religions doing great good and great evil. Religious symbols of every possible shape and color begin flooding into the receiving screens on earth. I smile. None would see Soldevia rise.

Then the time comes to chase the idiots away. I reach out with my power and slowly release the roots of every tree, then pull them up so they hover in the air twenty feet above the ground and began bringing them slowly towards where I float in the center of future Soldevia. I repeated the process, accumulating scrap metal in one pile, lumber in another, still living plants form a group, lavender makes up its own. I cannot make plants, each one will be important to forming Soldevia as a living growing place.

I feel the idiot’s fear as they watch trees rippled from the earth, and as their tin roofs slither from their places, screws coming with, to fly off to the west. I yank on the nails and they flee a collapsing house behind them. I allow their car to go, taking a tad too much delight in making their drive a living hell, ripping up tar and stone behind them, guard rails in front, like one of those dreams where whatever you do everything falls apart, they drive.  Fifty feet from the border I rip the tin off their car and the rubber off their wheels. They run the rest of the way. Feet beating on stone that crackles at each step.

I send my materials spinning and then begin setting my triggers in motion. Hills rip apart, and the land itself flattens, earth forms concentric half circles, open side towards the sea. Excess dirt spills out into the ocean to create long arms of earth that stretch like a mothers arms welcoming future ships. I stop the present navy ships attempting to come close, draining their fuel supply, and clogging their engines. The planes won’t start either. I am alone.

I stand alone except for seven friends, the circle I have invited to take part in this building. They position themselves equal distances apart on one of the inner circles I have formed, and take their own lives there. Like the cities of old, this one will be built on blood. My sorrow at their loss, expected, but still soul wrenching, rips through the barrier between here and the other side. The gods, young and old, tumble through the rupture in space and time. I invite them to their city and joyfully they come. My tears dry and an expression of awe come to my lips. I never expected them to be - like this!

Alone except for a thousand gods, I resume my troubles. I bring lava roiling from the earth’s core to spiral and circle, white hot, and settle into pre formed shapes. Circles within circles, the city takes shape out of a single block of solid stone. I set pillars and pilings made of diamond unseen within the granite, so even if the earth shakes this city will not fall. I drive them deep into the earth where their lower ends might melt were they made of iron so this city will never wash away. Built to last a million years, this city will not crumble one moment before.

I bring the metals in the stone to the surface before it cools, where they make a rainbow of colors and swirling shapes. Fractals within   fractals, mirrors mirroring mirrors, the city glistens like a butterfly freshly emerging from its cocoon. I wear the stone down until it is as smooth as wood touched by a thousand hands. This city must seem old.

Towers spire, echoing the Olympic Mountains behind. Roads, too small for any car to drive on, echo the streams and creaks as they wander down to the sea. I build modify and shape the matter that makes this city solid. In each circle I add a stunning detail, a mural of the gods, a cloudscape mirrored on the pathways. I enjoy the sculptures in Port Angeles I place them throughout one circle, adding my own to the mix. I am very aware of the light here. Mirrors wind light into every alley. The towers awe, but never block out light. They spiral upward, like plants seeking after the sun.

I use the plants I gathered to make this place alive. I add lavender to every conceivable niche. Every tree seems as if it has always been, and the city makes room for a million years of growth. Grass does not stretch out in endless lawns, but rather adorns rooftops and gutters where it’s strategically placed to recycle the rain. Every system here is sustainable and strong. I’ve set my massive mind to each detail, and decided on the best solution. This city will never need repairs, unless some foolish human decides to destroy my work. I hope it does not come to that.

I leave pieces of ingenious technology scattered throughout. Exposed so that some clever soul can observe and replicate what I’ve made. This city is to be a model of what all cities should become. Beautiful but practical, this city models how to work with nature not against her, and use her methods to man’s advantage. Seven of my energy sources, power the whole city, with enough extra to power the state. I build bio computers into the buildings that would need them, and chips with as much data as I think mankind can safely use, are left behind.

A bullet line connects the mighty city, which without cars might be difficult to traverse. Trains suspended on magnetic fields, are prepared to run predictable routs for the next million years. The well I drank of - swells in power and gives it to someone every thousand years. I want my city to last many such manifestations. Maybe even outlast the next earth-shaping maniac like myself that comes along. I don't concern myself with this. It is the Earth’s choice to give of her power when that time comes, not mine.

Finally I extend my power to the gods and each uses it to shape a book that contains their wisdom. I place each book on the alters I’ve made in the massive temple which serves as the central circle. Each god nods in approval. My work is done. My goddess teaches that each person comes here to learn all there is to know. I have completed this task. My goddess teaches that people have a duty to give to the world that which makes them individual. I have given this as well. I place a scroll before the massive front gates instructing only priests to enter in the first seven days. I add that the Mayor may lead the initial exploration. I can feel the belief swirling through the world, and the gods swell with it. I can already feel the old rivalries and tensions emerging. New myths will be made today, and in the days hereafter.

    *                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *                  

After the first hour of searching without any major problems our party decided to split up. The priests all cautioned be to be reverent, Murrow shaking the stump of his newly cauterized hand as a warning. I smiled and promised I wouldn’t flip off any alters, no matter how demonic the god might look. I wondered then why I had been allowed in, when all the others had to be priests. The city still awed me. I wandered aimlessly for a while, snapping photos, checking doors, nothing was locked.

He doesn’t expect to see anyone when he opens the door. The poor guy almost has a heart attack when he sees me. He senses my power. The Mayor begins to speak but I am faster.

“I am the one” He knows what I mean. “If you want to lock me up you can, but what I did I did for the world.”

The kid says the words calmly - I think I’m still in shock. This kid is the mastermind who can blow up chain stores without being caught, raise a city in the night. The refuge’s story flashes like a stoplight through my mind. My gun is useless against this creature. Why did we even bring them? The kid begins to move.

I hand him the butterfly brooch, and as it touches him I use the last of its power to give this man the ability to strip me of mine. The earth is done with me. There is no longer any reason for me to exist. My religion teaches that we come here to learn. I know all there is to know. It teaches that each person has something only they can give to the world. This was mine. The mayor places his palm on my chest, and I am human again. As he walks, still dazed, from the room, I turn my face to the sky, my lips murmur softly against the air of a new age.

Ashes to ashes - Dust to dust. - and softly I crumble.

Reviews

[JayG]

• You have half an hour to get the building clear.

I'm guessing that when you read this you know who's talking, who they're talking to, and why. But in all the world you're the only one. So when reader looks at it it's meaningless...as-they-read it. And since there is no second first impression, here is where many of your potential readers turn away. Seems a shame, when by providing context for the line as it's read, that doesn't have to be.

• The receptionist’s eyes grow big.

So an unknown person, in an unknown place, in an unknown year, some kind of "receptionist" has her eyes suddenly begin to grow larger for unknown reasons? Why would a reader care, unless they know what caused it?

As an aside, eyes can widen, but they can't physically grow larger.

• The voice on the other side continues.

The voice? Not the person? Makes no sense. And on "the other side?" The reader doesn't know where we are. They don't know what's going on. And they have no idea of who we are. So while you have words on the page, they literally have no meaning for anyone but you. And since people won't read what makes no sense, you'll lose your readers before the end of paragraph one—which is why, with over 100 postings, you have only a few comments. And that's a shame because it doesn't have to be that way.

You're spending lots of time at the keyboard, and posting pieces as fast as you can churn them out, but no one is doing more than reading a paragraph or two because you're writing reports, not stories. You,a narrator whose voice contains only the emotion suggested by the punctuation the reader sees AFTER the line has been read, and whose words mean nothing to the reader, who's not been given context to make them meaningful, are alone on stage, talking ABOUT events, in general terms. That's every bit as interesting as any report or essay. It informs but does not, and cannot engage the reader, emotionally. But the entire purpose of fiction is to provide an emotional connection between reader and protagonist. As E. L. Doctorow put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” But the school-day skills you're using can only give the weather report because, by design, they are dispassionate—an external observor explaining and reporting.

Remember, the universities offer degrees in Commercial Fiction-Writing. And the skills writers learn there are the ones the pros take for granted. No matter your sincerity; no matter your intent; no matter how many times you edit, if you lack that knowledge you're in the position Mark Twain spoke of with “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

You can write in any way you care to, of course, if, having the reader get the story as you intend them to get it doesn't matter. But if it does matter, investing a bit of time on acquiring your professional education makes a LOT of sense.

The library's fiction-writing section can be a HUGE resource, so time spent there is time wisely invested.

And to help, the best book I've found to date on the basics of fiction is free to read or download at the address just below.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

It won't make you a pro, because that's your job. But it will give you knowledge and techniques to get there with it it's in you.

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

[Silvanus Silvertung]

Hmm - I've been moving all my old writing into Writer's cafe - this one written as the final project for my first creative writing class. There are all sorts of things I would change now. . . And might as I reformat for Writer's cafe.

I'd be curious whether, after the initial line which didn't grab you (but you read past anyway) whether the story did grab you at some point?

[JayG]

What you provide is a report, as is pretty much everything you've posted. And you're thinking in terms of the flow of the plot events as the thing that matters to a reader. As such you're transcribing a dispassionate external observer talking to the reader ABOUT story detail. But plot is history, not story. The reader wants to be made to CARE, and to FEEL, not know. Give the best plot ever conceived to the average hopeful writer and he result will be rejected in a page, or less. But give a pro any of your plots and the reader will turn page-after-page, because it's the characters, and the reader interesting in their moment-to-moment life—their reaction to the events of the plot—that matters.

Think about yourself reading a horror story. As you read, do you want the author to explain that the protagonist going into that spooky cellar feels terror? Or do you want the writing to make YOU feel as if you're going into the cellar, in real-time...as-the-protagonist, and feeling that terror, yourself? Do you want information, or to be made to feel the emotion the protagonist is experiencing, yourself?

At the moment, like most, you're focusing on events, exactly as you were taught in school. But all else aside, that approach contains a trap:

Because you intimately know the situation, the characters and their backstory, and, your intent for how the words are to be taken, as you write, you're going to leave out detail that's obvious to you, simply because it is obvious. So, parts of the story will remain in your head, never making it to the page. And when you read those words, with the situation already in your mind, they call that up and for you, it's all exactly as you envisioned it.

But for the reader? As they read, someone unknown, in a voice they hear as dispassionate is talking about things for which they have no context. Will context come if they continue? It doesn't matter because they won't. There is no second first-impressionm, and confusion cannot be retroactively removed. And if they don't continue, your plot, no matter how great, will never be seen.

Forget any creative writing course you took. They're useless. The average undergrad CW course has the students a chapter on the skills of fiction, then write a short story that the class will critique, with no more knowledge of the specialized techniques of the fiction-writer then does the one struggling to write that piece. In other words, the blind-leading-the-blind.

How much time did any teacher spend on on the three issues that must be clarified quickly in any scene: Where we are in time and space, what's going on, and whose skin we wear? None, right?


How about control and usage of the short-term scene-goal, the difference between POV as defined by personal pronouns and viewpoint, which is what writers actually mean when they use the term point-of-view? Again none.

And of the most importance, did they cover such things as the structure of a scene on the page, as against one on screen and stage, why it differs so greatly, and, why it ends in disaster for the protagonist? Because if we don't truly understand what a scene is, and how to manage it, can we write one? I commented on this story because you're working hard, but missing some critical skills that pretty much all of us are when we turn to writing fiction.

They're things only a fiction-writer needs to know, and covered only in books about fiction-writing technique—like the one I recommended. So copy/paste the address into the URL window at the top of any Internet page and hit Return to read or download it. It's the book that got me my first contract, after six many-times-queried but never sold novels, so maybe it can do that for you.

And for what it might be worth, the articles in my WordPress writing blog are based on the teachings you'll find in that book, and meant as an orientation, so far as the major differences in approach between the writing skills we're given in school and those needed by the fiction-writer.

[Silvanus Silvertung]

I'm pretty sure you're either a scammer trying to get me to clink a dirty link - or someone trying to sell me something. You read like you want something.

That said - you're right. I went through it again - not having actually read the piece in - oh - six or seven years (facebook notes is closing and I'm just transferring everything over) - and it is notably terrible. As an eighteen year old's first fantasy story is like to be.

I'm glad that at the time I got praise and encouragement - and not the kind of review you just left - because I kept writing - some better, some worse.

If you are not a scammer - and just love taking pokes at the literal meanings of first sentences - may I direct you over to Umbril https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/Pan_Greenwood/1947212/

Just copy/paste the address into the URL window at the top of any Internet page and hit Return to read it.

[JayG]

• I'm pretty sure you're either a scammer trying to get me to clink a dirty link - or someone trying to sell me something. You read like you want something.

If you think anyone is going to waste twenty minutes writing a critique of your work, then spend the time needed to respond to your note, simply to send one person to a phony site, you’re not nearly as smart as I gave you credit for.

Had you done the most basic of checking you’d know that I have thirty books on Amazon, owned a manuscript critiquing service, and have taught writing technique at workshops.

Had you checked, you’d know that I’m one of the top reviewers on this site, currently have 751 friends, and have been actively posting work and critiquing here since 2016.

Had you looked at that WordPress writing blog I mentioned, you’d know what I was talking about…and what you need to work on.

But you did none of that. So...having pointed out the problems you face, I’ve led you to the water. Drinking is your concern. I’ll bow out and leave the decision as to what to do next to you.