Bad news

An excerpt of the thriller "The Bait" in which a young woman is asked by her country's authorities to seduce a certain middle aged scientist to fly to meet her and to defect after a short affair.

Bad news

Tje Bait

An excerpt

On coming home from work Dimitri Guromov found his wife sitting in their small living room with a bowed head, and with a worried expression on her pretty face.

‘What’s the matter Sonichka? He asked her as went straight to his young wife. He hugged her and covered her face with warm kisses trying his best to revive her spirits.

‘What’s wrong my dearest, did you’ve any trouble at the office today?’

She rose to her feet, turned to her young husband; embraced him in her arms, and raising her pretty face to his, kissed him and looked straight into his eyes.

‘No, but I came early and I didn’t prepare supper yet…’

‘What is it then, what bothers you my love?’ He barged into her last sentence nervously.

‘I’ll better give you something to eat first Dima, you must be hungry.’

‘No, you’d better tell me first what bothers you, what it’s all about! I’m not that hungry.’

‘Alright dearest let’s sit down and I’ll tell you what bothers me.’ She said and kissed him again, before detaching herself from his arms.

‘Leonid our department manager came up to my desk and asked me to follow him to his office.’ She opened up and kept watching her young husband’s stern features, expressing suspicion very clearly, and she regretted on the spot to have chosen that opening sentence.

‘He said that I’m expected at the company’s general manager’s office in the other building, and explained to me where the general manager’s office is. That was all he said, and it didn’t take more than a minute or so and I was on my way to the other building…’

‘I see,’ Dimitri said somewhat relieved. ‘The general manager! What could he want with you?’ He wondered aloud falling again into uneasiness.

‘I couldn’t know for Leonid didn’t tell me why I was summoned to the big boss office, and don’t cut me off please, just listen. I need your advice and its rather an important matter.’

‘Alright, alright,’ he mumbled, ‘so…?’

‘I was terribly frightened, I’ve never seen that man before, I’ve never set a foot in the other building up to this very morning.’ She added with an embarrassed smile.

‘I’ve told you many a time about the haughty airs those who work there have, didn’t I? Well I was stopped at the other building’s entrance, they’d to verify with his office whether I’m expected at all; and then in the elevator seeing my badge, the three women who had a lively chat till I entered it kept their mouth shut, up to the thirteenth floor where the general manager sits. It was so unpleasant…’

‘I’m sure how unpleasant that ride upward must have been my dearest, but go on I want to hear every detail of what happened there.’

‘As soon as I entered the ante room, his secretary said go right in, he expects you. I didn’t even knock on his office door, I went straight in like a robot.’ She made a short pause and uttered a short nervous laugh.

‘There were two men inside. One sat behind the broad desk, the other one stood beside it; and then the one who was standing said: ‘This is Sonia Guromova sir’ and left. I was shocked and petrified, as I was standing in front of the company general manager, and even in my confusion I could understand who was the one behind the desk

‘So why were you summoned to his office, are we in some trouble…?’

‘No, we aren’t don’t panic Dima dear… He was very polite, and asked me to sit down, offered me a cigarette, which I rejected of course; and then after a few preliminary questions of how I’m doing and you know…’

‘No I don’t know, and let’s skip that preliminary opening!’ He retorted angrily.

They were both silent for a few seconds, realizing that they have not experienced before such a tensed situation, which erupted so suddenly with hardly any sensible reason at all.

‘I’m sorry I’ve weaved such a yarn out of it dearest Dima, he offered me a job that’s all there was to it; a temporary one with all the secrecy needed of course.’

‘Does it mean that you’ll have to quit, and work for them…?’

‘Oh no, I’ll work six hours a day and get the same salary, they’ll cover it; and I’ll get an extra pay for the job I’ll do for them, at home.’

‘On our computer…?’

‘Yes no matter how much time I’ll spend at home, I’ll get for it the same pay as I get for my six hours at the office.’

‘Why didn’t you tell it to me straight away…? My God how you got on my nerves!’ He exclaimed releasing the caught air in his lungs.

‘But what is it, what kind of a job is it?’ He recalled what he missed in his young wife’s short explanation, and was on edge again.

‘I don’t know he didn’t tell me what it’s all about. He said he wants me to discuss the terms with you, and have our mutual consent first; and only then he would tell me what I’m supposed to do.’

‘Do we have any other choice but say yes thank you we agree, but for God’s sake how can we agree when we don’t have the slightest idea what it’s all about?’

‘But you do know dearest Dima as well as I do that if I’m fit for whatever job they’ve in store for me, we’ll have to comply and tell them that we agree, and that’s why I’m worried.’ And without waiting for her husband’s comment, she went to the kitchen to prepare their dinner.

© Haim Kadman 2019 - all rights .reserved.

Reviews

[JayG]

This is 100% telling, and as such reads far too much like a report. It's WAY to general, and told in overview by a dispassionate outside observer, whose voice, and the emotion in it, can't be heard. That matters a LOT, because a story is lived, never talked about.

I wish I had better news, but if you were thinking of submitting this story, it will be rejected because it is all telling. And that is a professional analysis, not a personal opinion.

The thing we miss is that all professions are learned IN ADDITION to the skills we're given in school. So if fiction is your passion, and I hope it is, hit the local library's fiction writing section and add some professional skills to your current set.

Good News? No. Nor is it something you hoped to hear. But if you hope to succeed at writing it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

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

[Haim Kadman]

Dear Jay thanks so much for your detailed advice, but I’m very pleased with this excerpt, which is a small example of my thriller “The Bait”, It’s my 25th book and I’ve published digitally 24 books with Amazon. Your comment and the fact you don’t like my style of writing greaves me, but I’ve no intention to change my style of writing.

[JayG]

We all like our own writing. So what? It’s the reader you need to please.

And it’s not your “style” I commented on. It’s that you’ve not taken the time to learn the professional skills of fiction.

Of course you’re self published. That’s no accomplishment. Anyone can publish anything. If you spend a bit of time, and a few bucks on your writers education perhaps you won’t have to self release your work.

[Haim Kadman]

Thank again Dr. Jay, I’m an autodidact and I don’t think of pleasing the reader while I’m writing; I live my writing, all along the plot up to the book’s end.

[JayG]

While you believe you're self taught, you spent twelve years of your life, or more being taught only nonfiction writing techniques in school, as you were prepared to be a productive adult, with a set of general skills that employers require. In school, you wrote assigned reports and essays, practicing, till those skills feel intuitive. But how much time was spent on the structure of a scene, dialogue tag usage, and things like the three issues that need to be addressed, quickly, on entering any scene? Damn little.

So in the end, everything you write using those nonfiction skills reads like a report.

Nonfiction's goal is to inform. So it's fact-based and author-centric, as is your writing. It "tells" the reader. And as such, the words are those of an external, dispassionate, observer, who is presenting the story's events in synopsis, in a voice devoid of all emotion not mandated by the punctuation and word meaning. That's every bit as exciting as a history book or a report.

But the goal of fiction is to entertain the reader by giving them an emotional experience—the feeling of living the story in real-time. Its techniques are emotion-based and character-centric. They present the events from within the viewpoint of the one living the story—what we call showing. No way in hell can you do that with nonfiction writing skills.

In fiction for the page the structure of a scene is vastly different from one on the stage or screen. But not knowing what that structure is, or even that it is different, will you include a short-term screen-goal, or even know you should? Demonstrably, no. Will the scene end in disaster for the protagonist if you're unaware that it should, and why? Of course not. If you don't know what a scene is, how can you write one?

When you read your own work, as you edit, you cheat. Before you read the first word you visualize the scene; you know the desires of every character before they have them; you know all the necessary backstory; you know when to pause, meaningfully; you know when to change intensity and cadence; you know the body-language that will moderate or amplify emotion; you feel the gestures that visually punctuate; and, you feel yourself illustrate the story's emotion via changing expression.

So for you, every line points to mages, emotion, and memories stored in your mind.

The reader? They know only what you present. So for them, every line points to images, emotion, and memories stored in *YOUR* mind. And since you're not there to explain...

Certainly, you can continue writing in any way you care to. You can delete my comments and forget they were made. It hurts me not at all. But if you're going to spend all that time sitting at the keyboard writing your stories think about this:

From the day you began reading fiction, you, and everyone you know, have been reading professionally written and prepared work, almost exclusively. Given that your audience EXPECTS to see those techniques in use when they read fiction, does it not make sense to spend a bit of time and perhaps a few coins acquiring the skills those readers expect you to use?

If you think it's fun to live the stories as you write them now, I can tell you that having the protagonist as an active co-writer, living the story moment-by-moment, is infinitely better. And I say that both as a writer, and as someone who owned a manuscript critiquing service, and who has taught at workshops.

But...having had my say, and not wishing to annoy, I'll bow out with a wish for success in your writing career.