The Mill Astride Breezy-Tops

Most Harry Potter books open with a chapter that has little to do with the main story. Hopefully, written in a similar vein, this is a brief description our character's home and setting.

 Ormerod Windmill sat tall upon the distant hill, and looked over the Devonshire village of Breezy-Tops. It was a most unwelcome thing upon the skyline and when the constabulary had denied them the rights to destroy it, the villagers of Breezy-Tops had often schemed to have it demolished in a freak accident, or at the very least populate the surrounding area to make the sight more homely and less ominous. 

 But none of these conspiracies ever got very far, because there was no one prepared to actually approach the uncanny tower. The four sails struck a stark silhouette against the Dartmoor skies, and eerie by day, menacing by night, it only fuelled stories and old folktales of the moorlands that surrounded the village.

 It was not just the strange or austere appearance of the mill, standing alone against the desolate tops, but the goings-on that might be seen upon the tor, goings-on that, if they didn’t know better, the locals might have called magic. The village was not an urbanised metropolis, or even suburban township, so caught up in the hustle of modern life that it’d forgotten its history, because the residents of Breezy-Tops remembered very what happened there centuries prior.

 Exeter, not a day’s walk at the time and not a half-hour drive nowadays, was widely documented as the first and last site of the witch hangings in England, and the local residents knew very well what sorts of unnatural arts used to be practised. It was scary to conceive that one might be living amongst someone with the power to glimpse the future through mere observation of the night sky, or turn the family dog into a bloodthirsty hound. 

 Or furthermore lay crippling illness upon one’s neighbour by offering them a pot of herbalised tea. Still standing in Breezy-Tops was the old three-legged mare, the hanging post of those convicted of medieval witchcraft who, contrary to popular modern belief, were never in fact burned at the stake. Not in England, at least. And the residents of Breezy-Tops still bowed their head to or tapped three times the structure in gratitude for keeping their hamlet free from sorcery. If the local residents, protected and mostly ignorant of the wisdom of big-city life and modern-day happenings, it was the unpleasant things that magic could do.

 No one quite knew what happened to the mill or its ownership during the infamous witch-trials. There were no records of convictions from the homestead, or incidences of any real significance apart from one strange fact. In the midst of the witch-trials, which just so happened to coincide with the golden age of windmills in England, the mill upon the hill ceased operation. 

 Trade deals were cancelled, surviving tariffs and tax ledgers no longer tallied the commerce, and ever since, as far as those in the village were aware, no sack of flour was ever produced. And the villagers would’ve been happy if that had been the end of it, if they’d never had had to turn their attentions to the windmill again. The sight of such a thing upon a distant hill, still, silent and uninhabited, was something they could’ve learned to live with. But still, silent and uninhabited were three things they suspected it never was.

 There were several things that began to stir the villager’s mistrust of the place, some dating all the way back the seventeens century. For one, when storms or gales come down upon the Devonshire township- so frequent this happened that it was this which had given the village of Breezy-Tops its name in the first place- the sails on the tower stood stiff as stone. 

 Of course, there was the suggestion this was simply a matter of brakes or locks upon the sails, but it had been observed, on more than one occasion, that when a still settled upon the pavements of Breezy-Tops, a calm too lazy to lift even a feather, the sails upon the mill would whirl and turn. And that was only the beginning it.

 It was rare, but over the years, over the generations other peculiar things would happen atop the distant hill. There were, of course, the sails which turned on the stillest of nights, but this was only that start of what people’s grannies, or people’s granny’s grannies had heard or seen.

 There was the smoke, smoke which rose pink and luminescent into the evening. Some said this was a sign the villagers had in some way angered the mill, whilst others insisted it signified that someone had been murdered. 

 And then there were the howls, and again this split the opinion of the residency. Some believed it to be prisoners locked in the milltower, or ghosts of the witches to be hanged in the city. Several turned to the shrieks of the demon dog that was said to walk the moors of Dartmoor and make prey of those on the heath after dark. Some even claimed to have seen the silhouettes of broomsticks circling the spire, though these were largely rubbished by most who, in spite of their basic upbringing, held enough common sense to decipher clairvoyance from absurdity.

 Such were these stories of the lonely mill on the tor that even policemen or members of the constabulary would find excuses to keep clear of the place, and no one had ever, as far as living memory was concerned, been seen entering or leaving the premises. But then was bred a generation of children in Breezy-Tops that were a grain braver than those who came before.

 

 So small was the village, that as a child it was quite impossible to stay away from ‘The Mob’, an affectionate title given to the group of roaming youths who were generally well-natured, if not on occasion reckless and chaotic in their games. The children of The Mob would speak of Ormerod Windmill in hushed voices, and often played games to see who was brave enough to wander closest to the mill. 

 One child swore he once saw a ghost drifting through the rooms beyond the front window, and another claimed with unyielding ferocity that he would’ve reached the driveway if it wasn’t for the suit of armour that appeared and chased him away. Stories grew in all shapes and sizes of who- or what- lived there. 

 For sure, someone did live there, for a plume of smoke could often be seen rising from the chimney, but no person or being upon the hill had ever been seen. Such were the strange phenomenon that to the children, and many of the grown-ups of Breezy-Tops once they’d coaxed the tales out of their mortified children, the mysterious mill was full of witches, skeletons, and all things malevolent and Halloween. Ghost stories were told of the place, and on the banks of Dartmoor another folktale was born. What the children and villagers didn’t know, however, was just how close some of their tall tales were to the truth.

Author's Note

Thank you so much for giving it a read, it really is appreciated! Any comments or feedback are most welcome :)

Reviews

[Spamalott]

I’m afraid your profession is getting in the way of your writing. This reads a very like a report, because you’re using the writing methodology you teach your students, which is fact-based and author-centric.

When using it for fiction, a narrator, whose voice cannot be heard, and so, is dispassionate, reports and explains, in overview and summation…just like a history book. And who reads them for fun?

So, basically, you, the narrator, are “telling” the reader a story. But no one reads fiction to learn about the events. That’s an informational experience. Great for the reports and essays you assign, because it informs the reader clearly, concisely, and accurately. But useless for fiction.

Universally, we are the victims of what I call, The Great Misunderstanding. We think we’ve learned to write in school. And we have learned one of the approaches. But think of the purpose of public education. It was instituted at the opening of the Industrial revolution to provide employers with a pool of prospective workers who had a predictable, and useful skill set. In other words, the traditional, Three R’s.

And what kind of writing do most employers require of us? Reports, papers, and letters, all nonfiction.

Think about your curriculum in English: Does the student learn why a scene ends in disaster for the protagonist when writing fiction for the page? How about the role of the short-term scene-goal and it’s management? In fact, are they taught even the basics, like the three issues we must address quickly on entering any scene, so the reader has context as they read?

See the problem? If you don’t truly know what a scene is, and why it differs from one on the screen, how can you write one? Worse yet, we won't address the problem we don't see as being one.

We universally forget that they offer degree programs in Commercial Fiction-Writing, And you have to figure that at least some of what they teach is necessary. Right?

Think of yourself reading. Have you ever had to stop reading to catch your breath because it had become so intense? Think of the times you stoped reading to say, “Oh my…now what we do?” THAT’S where the joy of reading is, in the emotional part of the story, with the emotion in question being ours. We want the writing to stir OUR emotions, and to be made to feel as if we’re living the story in real-time, as-the-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.”

And to quote the great Mark Twain: “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.”

The approach to fiction is emotion-based and character-centric. We place the reader into the story by making them live as we do. From waking to sleep our life is a linked chain of cause and effect—motivation and response. Something catches our attention and we evaluate and respond, which in many cases, determines what will next hold our attention. Can our protagonist live in any other way and seem real?

One very powerful way of pulling the reader into the story is shown in the article I link to below. It’s a condensation of one of the many techniques you’ll find in a book I’ll link to later. Take a minute to read it.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

The reason we need such a technique is a point we universally miss, which is that as readers, we hear, see, and react to everything that happens BEFORE the protagonist does. What that means is that as writers, we must calibrate our reader’s responses to those of the protagonist, so that they react appropriately. The article below expands on that:
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/i-saw-it-first-the-grumpy-writing-coach/

If they make sense, 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

The thing to remember Is that nothing I said is a reflection on your talent, or how well you write. So try a few chapters. I’m betting that you’ll spend a lot of time saying, “That makes sense…so how could I not have seen it for myself.” That’s fun the first ten times, till it becomes, “How in the bloody hell could I not have seen it for myself?” That’s usually followed by a scream of frustration. 😊

So…I know this is unexpected, and far from what you hoped to see. And given the emotional commitment that writing takes, it stings. I’ve been there more than once.

But here’s the thing. Learning what you want to know is never a chore. And once you master those tricks, the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun. And because you’re forced to live the scene in the persona of the protagonist, they become your co-writer, whispering suggestions and warnings in your ear.

It can become so intense that I once wrote for 32 hours straight, unable to stop for anything but bathroom breaks and the food my darling wife insisted I eat.

My characters had refused to do as I wanted, had the bit between their teeth, and I simply had to find out how the scene ended.

I LOVE when that happens.

Hang in there, and keep on writing. It never gets easier, but with work and study, we do become confused on a higher level.

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

[Nusquam Esse]

This is great advice, and a gem on a site filled mostly with platitudes from people who don't want to invest more time than a paragraph into a piece. (Legitimately, few people will read stories on here).

One thing you can learn from poets, that can help you with writing fiction, is understanding that you don't always need precision. Going through your writing and reading it aloud after removing different words can help you better understand how you actually write, what your words contribute to your meaning. It can help remove your passive voice, empower readers to better insert themselves into the story (if even non-essential details are put in, what is there to imagine? On that note, look for opportunities to fill in details with unusual sensory descriptions. Rather than how something looks, the texture it conveys... these can help readers fill in gaps in ways that engage them, much like the smell of rain.), and it can increase the general density of quality words in your writing. The fewer words you use to convey something, the more likely those words are engaging, the less likely they are to bore. One of my favorite poetic lines is from Pablo Neruda, "In what language does rain fall on tormented cities?" I have spent so much time thinking about such a simple sentence, it would be wonderful to be able to let your brevity convey so much within the reader. Please do take the above review to heart, and use it to explore what writing does for you--it is so much more than telling a chronology.

[Patrick Jinks]

You're both legends. Thanks so much for the great in depth advice. I'm very much a hobby writer and I've tried Wattpad a few times, and I think I've got more from these two reviews than all my time on there. It's unbelievable to hear actual criticism rather than mindless compliments. Especially Spamalott, your description of what you are looking for is an example in itself!