Prologue

A blinding flash of light that turns a darkening night sky into daylight; it emanates from and then collapses into a speck of forest just north-east of Butte, Montana. Mysteriously it lasted only as long as a typical lightning flash, only brighter, lighting up the sky for hundreds of miles around, yet it was without sound or evidence of what caused it. The date is, Monday, May 20, 2019, the time, 19:43 military. For several minutes, the forest is abnormally quiet and still, like the inhabitants are frozen in suspended animation; gradually it comes back to life. Observers knew it wasn’t lightning. An astronaut on the space station notified NASA that he had seen a bright flash of light in the north-west region of the United States, around Idaho or Montana. The information was quickly relayed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA). People from over a hundred miles away reported seeing a bright flash of light. The pilot of a commercial flight en route to Portland, radioed the Helena Regional Airport tower that she had just seen a bright flash of light. She further reported that looking around, nothing seemed abnormal. It only took a few minutes for that information to be passed to the FAA and subsequently to DHS and NSA, they also received reports from local authorities as well.

Authorities at NSA directed that a satellite surveillance should be done as soon as possible; extensive scans revealed nothing abnormal. Small planes and a helicopter from Bert Mooney Airport took off shortly afterwards. Flying over the suspected area of origin, as though they were searching for a lost individual, they couldn’t find where it came from.

About a mile from the origin of the flash, was a biologist studying the area. Patricia Lynne was collecting samples when the flash occurred. It was bright, unbelievably bright, blinding her momentarily but it only lasted like a flash of a camera when taking a picture, and like the camera flash, there was no sound. She waited, expecting to hear it shortly, like with lightning, the sound will arrive seconds later depending on how far away it was when lightning strikes. It didn’t come. After a few minutes she went back to work, pushing it from her mind as unusual for now. Like many others she would check the news when she got back to her cabin. Perhaps in a day or so, she would do some exploring of the general area where she thought it might have originated from.

Her cabin was outfitted with solar panels and batteries. Because she spent little time in the cabin her need for electricity was minimal; the solar panels produced a few hundred-watt-hours per day and it would be stored in the batteries. The cabin was also equipped with an emergency generator.

In town, people congregated and speculated. Many thought it was aliens landing, a government conspiracy, a missile launch failed and the missile hit there, a plane crashed, the list was exhaustive. Governmental authorities cordoned off the area while exhaustive searches were conducted. Aerial, satellite, and military ground troops surveyed the suspect area, without success; there wasn’t the slightest hint of anything unusual. When the government released the area, private citizens hoping to find the answer, in the hope of becoming famous, explored the area for many months; they finally gave up, except for an individual or two. Out-of-towners, most believing it was because of aliens, came to search  which was good for local business. No one found anything unusual.

Reviews

[Jessey Valentine]

I just came across your draft and I like the idea. I see a few slow flow areas that could be cleaned up.
I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Best, J

[JayG]

The methodology you’re using is, unfortunately, not compatible with fiction for the printed word. The problem is, for you, and for reasons I'll get to in a moment, you'll not see the problem. And since we’ll not address the problem we don’t see as being one, I thought you'd want to know.

In this, two problems are holding you back. The first is that like about half of the hopeful writers I see online you’re transcribing yourself talking to the reader, as if in a verbal storytelling session. But that can’t work for the reader.

First, not a trace of your vocal performance makes it to the page. So while you hear your own performance as you read, and it works, the reader has only the emotion suggested by the punctuation they see after the sentence is read. And the meaning they take is what the words suggest to THEM, based on THEIR life-experience, not your intent. Moreover, the rest of your performance, the visual part: gesture, facial expression changes, eye movement, gesture, and body language, is gone for the reader. So what they really have is a storyteller’s script minus the stage directions and rehearsal time.

Another problem is that you begin reading the story already knowing your characters intimately, plus the situation, and our location. So for you, the words act as pointers to images, story, and more, stored and waiting in your mind. But the reader? For them, the words act as pointers to images, story, and more, stored and waiting in *YOUR* mind. But without you there to explain…

And, if that isn’t enough, we all leave our school years a victim of what I call, The Great Misunderstanding. For the time of our education, we practice a skill called writing. And since we do, and no other approach but what we’re given is mentioned, we make the natural assumption that writing-is-writing, and we have that under control.

If only… Problem is, the only methodology we’re taught is nonfiction. Why? Because it’s what most people need on the job. Professions, like your own, and Fiction-Writing, are acquired IN ADDITION to the general skills of our primary education. Surely at least some of what the hard working students working toward a degree in Commercial-Fiction-Writing learn is necessary. Right? But if we aren't aware that such specialized knowledge exists....

But somehow, almost universally, we miss that, and never realize that we leave our school years as ready to write fiction as to perform a successful appendectomy—which is what you need to address. And forget that creative writing semester you took. Spending a week or two on the basics of writing fiction, as part of that semester, does nothing but convince us that we’re ready to write fiction, when we're not.

So, what do you do? Simple. You need more information so you go out and acquire it, then practice those tricks to make them yours. The library’s fiction-writing section can be a huge resource. 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

Read a chapter or three and I think you’ll find it an epiphany, and a lot like going backstage at the theater for the first time. You’ll be moved to say, “But that’s so obvious. How did I not see it, myself? That’s fun for the first ten times. Then…

But the result is that the protagonist becomes your writing partner, whispering suggestions and warnings in your ear as you write, to the point where it may feel as if that character is writing the story. It makes the act of writing a LOT more fun.

If an overview of the major differences between fiction and nonfiction writing would help, the articles in my WordPress Writing blog are based on the kind of thing you’ll find in such a book.

But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing. It never gets easier, but with work, we do become confused on a higher level. And of more importance, the crap to gold ratio shifts toward gold.

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