Chapter 1: A Great Day

Young first mate Avian Frisk wakes up excited to start the day, seemingly ready for anything on the dull Valeydros, a cargo ship. Then one man sends his great mood plummeting down a black hole.

Avian Frisk stepped out of his room, yawned, and stretched. Already having a good feeling about the day ahead, he smiled. It was bound to turn out great, he was sure of it. Ready to start the day, Avian started walking down the dull gray corridor towards the mess hall, the metal floor making hollow clanking sounds with each step he took. He had always been a cheerful and vivacious young man and felt that every little act of optimism kept the ship running, so he smiled at every crew member he passed, showing the deep dimples in his cheeks. 

The mess hall was a large room about the size of a typical high school lunchroom with rows of long tables, the other early risers scattered around the room eating their breakfast and scrolling on their console tablets. As soon as he walked through the steel sliding doors, the smell of fresh coffee attracted Avian to the drink station where Myra, or Jo, Jollimore stood, pouring a cup of coffee. She wore her usual outfit of overalls, a t-shirt, and a colorful bandanna wrapped around her head, her straight, black hair hanging loosely down her back. To anyone else, she would seem like just any old janitor. But to Avian, she was radiant. Straightening his coat and brushing his blond hair out of his face, Avian approached her and leaned casually against the table.

“Good morning, Miss Jollimore,” he greeted her, flashing his pearly whites. “Would you be so good as to pour me a cup of your delicious coffee?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Frisk,” she replied, returning his smile and pouring some into a mug for him. “Black, I assume?”

“Yes, thank you.” He accepted it gratefully, carefully cupping the steaming hot mug in his large, rough hands. “Even us morning people need a cup of coffee now and then,” he joked.

She chuckled, her eyes sparkling with humor as she sipped her own cup of coffee. “So how’s it going, bossman? Nothing has gone wrong with any of the cargo yet, I take it?”

“So far it seems like the morning is going smoothly. The Valeydros isn't any more a hunk of garbage than usual,” he said, laughing lightly. “And the cargo is doing great this run. The chairmen of Certvi Corp back on Earth will surely be glad to hear that our trip to Delsil and back was boring and uneventful. How about you? I hope Mr. Janigler hasn’t been giving you trouble again.” 

Jo waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, everything’s fine. That old pilot’s just been his usual charming self. But you know what they say. When talking and five complaints don't work, deploy humor.” She shrugged with a grin. Her gaze suddenly drifted to a clock hanging on the wall nearby and her dark brown eyes widened in surprise. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Frisk, the time has just flown by. I have to get to work.”

Avian waved his hand. “No, it’s quite alright. I have to get to the bridge anyway.” She smiled and nodded, hurrying out of the mess hall. He smiled absently to himself, watching her hair swing wildly back and forth as she ran. So what if they were on opposite ends of the totem pole? To him, she was gorgeous without trying.

After finishing his coffee and breakfast, Avian headed off towards the bridge of the ship, weaving through the almost labyrinthine, metal corridors of the Valeydros. The door to the bridge slid back as Avian stepped confidently into the room. There was only a skeleton crew of pilots, chief officers, and technicians populating the bridge at that moment, so it was quiet other than the occasional faint beep of the tech or mumbles of conversation between crew members as they went about their duties. 

The room was laid out like the typical spaceship movies and television shows from decades prior with the sloping ramps coming down in two directions away from the doors, the two chairs for the captain and first mate, and the various stations where the technicians worked spread out around the room. Some stations, such as the comms system, were built into a wall with a small desk and keyboard for the designated crewmate. Others directly faced the window that showed the endless empty space ahead of them. There was even a convenient open space in the middle for the captain to pace back and forth in. Those movies had a lasting impact on ship-builders, to say the least.

He had only been in the room for a few minutes, standing in front of his chair and surveying the crew members work diligently around him, when Avian heard the door open behind him again. He turned, expecting to see the captain, as this was his usual time for appearing, but he was wrong. Instead, a thin, short man stepped through the doorway and made his way nervously down the left ramp. His short, brown hair was plastered to his scalp and his dark eyes darted anxiously around the room. The man twitched restlessly, his right hand planted firmly in his jacket pocket, and beads of sweat rested on his forehead.

Avian had never seen this man before, so, as was the typical reaction to a strange person not in uniform showing up on the bridge, he immediately assumed that the man was some kind of stowaway. However, he didn’t want to cause a scene this early in the morning. Instead, he straightened his jacket and walked up to the man.

"Morning, sir. You look anxious."

The man's bloodshot eyes narrowed as they landed on Avian. His entire body was shaking apart from the hand still in his pocket. "You have to turn the ship around. Right...Right now…"

Avian paused in surprise at the demand, then collected himself enough to reply. "Sir, please state your name and rank. And explain exactly why you are demanding we turn around."

“Look, man, we gotta turn around. I've... We're heading for disaster if we keep going... Bad, bad, bad things are gonna happen. You have to. For everyone's sake.” The man got steadily more nervous, glancing around the room as his bloodshot eyes widened into insanity. Other crew members began looking over in confusion and in annoyance at the disruption of the usually quiet atmosphere.

Trying his best to keep his voice calm, Avian spoke again. “Look, sir, we can’t just turn around. Certvi Corp expects us to be on time with this shipment of cargo. We can’t just turn around. How about you go see a doctor or something. You don’t look well.” He tried to herd the man towards the door, but before he could get close, the man pulled his hand out of his pocket revealing a gun which he pointed directly at Avian’s head.

The man set his jaw as tears began to stream down his face. “Everyone here is going to die. You have to turn it around, I've... I've seen what happens. I can't let it happen. You have to turn it around. Please. I don't want to hurt anyone, I don't... I don't…” His words faded into incoherent mumbling, the gun still aimed directly at the first mate’s face.

The first thought in Avian’s head when he was faced with the barrel of a gun between his eyes was “So much for that good feeling about today…” His muscles tensed up as he tried his best to stay calm. He had never had an experience like this in his whole twenty-eight years of life, so it was quite exciting. Terrifying, but exciting.

He took a deep breath to steady his voice before speaking again. “Why don't you just put the gun down, okay? We can talk about this. Like civil men. I'll take you to the captain, alright? You can talk to him. Because the captain is still in charge of the ship, I can't do anything without permission. Just... put down the gun.”

“We don’t have time to talk! They’re going to kill everyone! W-we can’t-”

The man’s tearful speech was violently interrupted when the Valeydros shook, throwing the man along with most of the crew to their knees. Avian recovered quickly after the shaking stopped, leaping back to his feet and staring down at the quivering man.

“What was that?” he demanded. “You had better give me a straight answer this time. And don’t even think about pointing that gun at me again. I doubt you’d have the guts to shoot me anyway.”

The man mumbled various words, obviously going into shock, his eyes empty and unmoving and his head hung in utter defeat. Avian was about to turn away and help the rest of the crew get back on their feet when he saw the man slowly raising the gun towards his own head.

“No!” Time seemed to slow down as Avian lunged at the man, reaching out to grab the gun. It was like the air had become molasses. The lights flickered, making Avian flinch midair, but he still managed to get a hold on the pistol and yank it from the man’s hand as he crashed to the ground beside him.

Suddenly, the man’s muscles tense up. His face seemed to be frozen in an expression of fear, his eyes seemingly boring a hole through the solid steel of the floor. His hand began to quiver even more than before, quickly spreading through his entire body. He began to convulse and fell flat on the floor. After a few seconds of disturbing silence from him, a screech pierced the artificial air of the bridge. Avian scrambled to his feet and stepped back at the sound of snapping bones as the man’s limbs began to contort in unnatural ways. Before his very eyes, the man began to undergo a transformation, unlike anything he’d ever seen. His limbs grew long, fingers growing into wicked talons. His skin seemed to flay itself off of his body, falling in strips to the floor, leaving a bloody mess underneath. His face, the only bit of skin left on his body, contorted into a permanent visage of fear.

The man was gone. Only a beast remained. It turned its glazed eyes over the cabin and let out a bone-chilling shriek before silence once again settled over the bridge, not a soul daring to speak.

Author's Note

How's my exposition? Too short? Did I get to the freaky stuff too quickly?

Reviews

[JayG]

Take a deep breath, this will sting, but I thought you should, and would want to know what’s holding you back. I’ve sold a few novels, taught at a workshop or two, and owned a manuscript critique service, so at least some of what I say may be of some use to you.

And bear in mind that nothing I’m about to say relates to your talent and potential, or the story. In fact, given your age you write very well. The problem is one of misunderstanding, and craft, the learned part of the profession

• Avian Frisk stepped out of his room, yawned, and stretched. He smiled. He had a good feeling about this day. It was bound to turn out great, he was sure of it. Avian was the first mate aboard the Valeydros, a ship working for the Certvi Corporation carrying cargo from the strip-mined planet, Delsil. This was his first voyage as a first mate and, since he was only 28 years old, it was a big deal to him to have made it so close to the top this quickly.

This isn’t story. It’s you, someone not in the story or on the scene, giving the reader a report—telling us what you visualize happening, as a transcription of your storytelling performance before an audience. It’s something a LOT of hopeful writers do, but it can’t work for reasons not apparent to the writer.

First: You placed effect, his smile, before we know the reason he smiles. Only the author can do this because in life cause ALWAYS comes before effect. So this isn’t him smiling, it’s you talking about it: Giving us a report.

Next: You open the story with him waking up. Why does it matter to a reader that he did. Would the story change in the slightest if it started as he reaches the bridge? Does anything happen that matters to the plot in this section? No. But you used 437 words to get him from his cabin to the bridge. And all he did was to get a cup of coffee. We’re on the third standard manuscript page and we’ve been reading for some minutes, and the only excitement was pouring a cup of coffee? And that brings us to problem three:

Our medium is serial. You must mention everything that happens, one at time—even if they happen at the same time. But life, and film, are viewed and heard in parallel. An eye-blink’s time and we hundreds of things. But listing them serially? It took us as long, or longer to read this sketchy overview of him getting his morning coffee than to have him do it. But were this film I’d know how large the mess hall is, how many people are there, what the ship looks like, what the people look like, and all the visual and audible ambience that makes it real. In print? All I got was a detailed description of him exchanging meaningless conversation with someone and getting a cup of coffee.

I wake up and have coffee in the morning. Would a description of my doing that excite you? No. Would you pay to read it? Hell no. Would an acquiring editor read past you talking abut things irrelevant TO HIM that morning—like how old he is and where the cargo originated? No.

Problem is, while you’re working hard, and care deeply about the story, you’re unaware that writing fiction is VERY different in approach from either verbal storytelling or the kind of writing we perfected with lots of reports and essays in school. So, you’re doing the best you can with what you have. But in the end, you’re using writing skills inappropriate to the mission, which is to entertain the reader by giving them the emotional experience of living the story in real-time, moment-by-moment. In our school days they never mention that there is another way to approach writing than with the nonfiction skills we get there.

Why? That’s because you, like everyone else, myself included, you missed an important point: All professions are learned IN ADDITION to what you’re getting in school, and Fiction-Writing is a profession. And…because you’ve been given a skill called writing, and the profession is called Fiction-Writing, you naturally assume that the two are related.

If only…

Think of how many reports and essays you’ve been assigned each year. By now you’re pretty damned good at writing them. And the purpose of a report or essay? To inform clearly and concisely, whch is what you’re doing in this story. But…when you read a horror story, for example. Do you hope to be informed that the protagonist is feeling terror? Or, do you want the author to terrorize you, and make you afraid to turn out the lights? See the problem? You’re telling the story TO the reader, not making them think and feel as the protagonist. But fiction is shown, not told. We place the reader into the protagonist’s persona; make them know what matters to the protagonist in the moment he or she calls now; and give them the protagonist assessment of the problems faced and the resources available. In other words, the reader has been calibrated to the situation as-the-protagonist-views-it. That places them into the character’s present, where what happens next is both uncertain and interesting because we know what WE want to happen as a result of what WE just did or said in the scene.

Tell the same scene in overview, as you do, and we learn what happens, but not what matters to the protagonist and why, which means that since we have no more emotional stake in the outcome, than were it a history book, we aren’t rooting for your protagonist. But if we don’t care about that character why turn the page? Never forget that our reader is a volunteer, not a conscript.

Think about the opening scene. Everything you told the reader as a lecture, is unnecessary to him getting to the bridge. He doesn’t have a single thought related to his past, where the ship came from, how old he is, or anything you mention. He’s thinking of his shift to come, and what he expects to be doing. All that can come out, naturally in conversation, or when he’s given a need to use that information.

Given that it’s HIS story. Why is the reader being given a lecture on what YOU’RE thinking about?

See how different fiction is from the report writing skills you’ve been trained to use? Your writing, now, is fact-based, and author-centric. You’re visualizing the video of the story, and telling the reader what happens, with authorial interjections to explain what’s not obvious.

For you, who knows what’s going on, and what you intend the reader to get, it works perfectly. For you, who can hear the emotion in the voice of the narrator and see the performance, it works. For the reader, who has only what your words suggest to them, based on THEIR background, not so much.

So, the problem we need to fix: Your teachers have not a clue of how to write fiction, because they, like you, think they learned to write, and that writing is writing. So were this piece the result of an assigned story, they’d love it because you’re reporting the story just as you were taught to. And don’t bother trying to explain it to them, because they “know” they have the necessary tools. Of course they’ve never mentioned the short-term scene-goal and what it does because they’ve not heard of it. They never explained the need to quickly orient the reader, so far as where we are, what’s going on, and who we are, without “telling” them, as you did here. I know that no one’s explained what a scene is on the page, how it differs from one on film, and why it almost always ends in disaster for the protagonist. And if they didn’t give you that knowledge how can you write a scene that sings to the reader?

Want an eye-opening experience? Dig around in the articles in my writing blog for a few of the issues a writer needs to take into account—things your teachers never mentioned. I predict that you’ll find yourself saying, “That makes sense…why didn’t I see that for myself?” That knowledge won’t make a writer of you, but you will have a better understanding of the problems we face, and the tools you need to acquire and polish to solve them.

Then, dig up a copy of James Scott Bell’s, Elements of Fiction Writing:
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Fiction-Writing-Conflict-Suspense-ebook/dp/B006N4DAZE/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Elements+of+Fiction+Writing+james+scott+bell&qid=1563058732&s=digital-text&sr=1-3

The local library’s fiction-writing section might have a copy. The school library won’t. Look at the excerpt on Amazon and you’ll see why I recommend it.

The good news? If you’re truly meant to write, you’ll love the learning. It’s like going backstage at the theater. But…fair warning. It’s not an overnight thing, where you read it and you’re then doing everything right. It’s going to take time. Remember, your current nonfiction skills are so well practiced that they feel intuitive. So as you write with the new approach, they’re going to scream, “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” They’re going to change what you’re typing to what they see as right without you noticing. Fixing that is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But only after I became aware that I was clueless about how to write fiction, and began digging out the tricks of the trade, did I sell a word of my writing.

So now that it’s summer, and you (hopefully) have a bit of time free, look for that book (or convince your personal Santa to order it for you) and dig in. But read it slowly, and as each new idea is introduced, take time to think about how it relates to your writing. And practice that point till it’s part of your writing tool kit. Forget to do that and three days later you won’t remember reading about it.

And when you finish the book, use what you learned for six months or so and read the book again. This time, with a better idea of where he’s going, you’ll get as much that’s new to you as you did the first time.

So…will that make a pro of you? Naaa. That’s your job. But it will give you the tools, and the knowledge of what they can do. And you’ll like writing more because your protagonist becomes your co-writer, who will whisper ideas in your ear, and tell you when you’re demanding a response from the character that doesn’t make sense to them.

I can tell you from experience, that there have been times when I’ve written myself into a corner, and had no idea of what to do, when the character, in effect, said, “How about if I…” And once, I was awake for thirty-six hours straight, because I couldn’t stop writing down what my protagonist was doing. I had to know what was going to happen next.

Yes, I’m crazy, but I love when that happens.

So have at it. And while you’re building a new you, hang in there, and keep on writing.

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

[Talia M.]

Thank you so much for your critiques and insight, I really appreciate your honesty. I will definitely look into those blogs and that book you suggested.

[SweetNutmeg]

You definitely didn't get to the freaky stuff too quickly. In fact, it could be quicker and I wouldn't mind. I'm terrible at beginnings, so I am not one to give specific advice, but generally my reaction as a reader is this: I found Avian Frisk's personality very funny, so relentlessly cheery and bouncing with good humor. For me, you got that right. I especially liked "felt that every little act of optimism kept the ship running," That captures his ridiculous but very good-natured conceit perfectly. There was maybe more between waking and confronting the stowaway than really needed, but I couldn't begin to tell you how to pare things down. I have trouble paring things down myself. I really enjoyed this beginning and hope you will post more.

[Talia M.]

Thanks so much! I have considered paring some stuff down a bit, and I did go back and do a lot of editing after JayG's insightful critiques, but I feel like the introduction to Jo's character and the kinds of interactions they share is important later down the line. And believe me, there is so much more to come.