Preview of the young adult novel, Wisp
- Thread starter Elizabeth_Grace
- Start date
This should probably be in "original fiction", not "book fanfiction." Maybe ask a mod to move this?
Anyway, on to the topic...
I'll be blunt: this was pretty bad.
You start with a kid that's, like, doodling, but I can't really tell what you're trying to do with the doodling as a characterization technique. Is she supposed to be autistic?
Then it turns out we're in the head of someone on trial for murder, which made me wonder why you casually segued into this from such a bland opening, without even a bomb-dropping line, but mostly it made me wonder how the narrator could tell that the kid was doodling from halfway across a courtroom full of people.
Then we find out they live in a Socialist Utopia, only it isn't, because of course not.
Also is this lady on trial for murdering herself? That's totally the way it's written. Did they bring her back from the dead with magic, or is she a ghost (that would explain the inability to focus, actually), or maybe she's a brainscanned copy of the dead lady running as a computer simulation?
Wait, no, she's just, like, floating around in the court while some other bloke is on trial. I guess that explains how she could see what the autistic kid was doing; she's not sitting in the hot seat.
That was probably the goofiest simile I've seen all week.
"Oh he tried to rape me; no big deal, I deflected him with a casual cliche. I didn't even had to put down my champagne!"
Anyway, spend more time describing the setting to us (like is she even dead? Wait, are these people human or literal worker bugs?) and less time having Fisher Charles cackle and twirl his mustache while he ties someone to railroad tracks.
Actually it would probably be a good idea to replace him with a better villain; "oh, she's going to accuse me of trying to commit a crime! Clearly I must publicly murder her literally over a dinner party before she can!"
Anyway, on to the topic...
I'll be blunt: this was pretty bad.
You start with a kid that's, like, doodling, but I can't really tell what you're trying to do with the doodling as a characterization technique. Is she supposed to be autistic?
Then it turns out we're in the head of someone on trial for murder, which made me wonder why you casually segued into this from such a bland opening, without even a bomb-dropping line, but mostly it made me wonder how the narrator could tell that the kid was doodling from halfway across a courtroom full of people.
Then we find out they live in a Socialist Utopia, only it isn't, because of course not.
Also is this lady on trial for murdering herself? That's totally the way it's written. Did they bring her back from the dead with magic, or is she a ghost (that would explain the inability to focus, actually), or maybe she's a brainscanned copy of the dead lady running as a computer simulation?
Wait, no, she's just, like, floating around in the court while some other bloke is on trial. I guess that explains how she could see what the autistic kid was doing; she's not sitting in the hot seat.
That was probably the goofiest simile I've seen all week.
"Oh he tried to rape me; no big deal, I deflected him with a casual cliche. I didn't even had to put down my champagne!"
Anyway, spend more time describing the setting to us (like is she even dead? Wait, are these people human or literal worker bugs?) and less time having Fisher Charles cackle and twirl his mustache while he ties someone to railroad tracks.
Actually it would probably be a good idea to replace him with a better villain; "oh, she's going to accuse me of trying to commit a crime! Clearly I must publicly murder her literally over a dinner party before she can!"
Okay, I tried to delete this trend so I could be in the Original Fiction area, but it wouldn't let me. So, I've rewritten my opening, based on the blunt feedback above:
Mela
Community Realm
Fisher’s hardened eyes kept my giggle in my throat. I was ready to laugh off his kiss attempt, playfully trying to decline his advances, but I stopped short. The coldness in his face scared me. Alcohol made him more brazen. His hand firmed around my arm, his fingers individually finding their placement on my body. Fisher’s grasp was commanding, but not strong enough bruise my toned bicep. He looked me straight in the eye, wanting me to mirror pleasure back at him. But I didn’t, I wouldn’t.
I straightened my spine and gathered my strength, pushing away from his clench. Fisher didn’t take kindly to my maneuvering. His demeanor instantly changed. His eyes looked glazed over. All I saw was the blackness of his soul when he backed me into the roof’s railing. It was when he had me cornered that I saw a gleam in his eyes. He had decided then that only one of us was going back to the party just one floor below us. It wasn’t me. He seemed super-human as he lifted me off my feet. I kicked and scratched him, realizing it might be my final act in this life. My efforts weren’t a match for his focus. I flew through the air backward, not knowing how many seconds I had until impact. Motion slowed as I noticed everything I passed on my way down. Curtains swayed under the flow of air conditioning inside hotel windows. Women were in various states of mid-dress. Men poured golden colored whiskey drinks in short glasses without ice cubes.
I didn’t let out a sound. I just thought about the only face I wanted to see, trying to imprint the red-toned ringlets of my daughter hair swirling on my mind instead of the wind’s force of my own brunette mane covering and uncovering my face.
My body was fresh in the ground when my daughter, Maven, marched into the Lyons Police Department. She demanded to know the status of the investigation into my death. The police looked befuddled. They spend more time enforcing curfew on teenagers than investigating anything more dangerous than money laundering. No one wanted to take this persistent 19-year-old girl seriously. Maven doesn’t question if I jumped or was pushed. Although she barely speaks to anyone in Lyons, I know she is plotting to clear my name and condemn the last person I was seen alive with, Fisher Charles.
In the beginning, there was an outpouring of support, pity, and homemade meals from the community. However, after a month or so the steam from fresh lasagna had cooled, and the supportive notes of encouragement had stopped being dropped off for the town’s only orphan. She didn’t want the community support and always made her visitor’s presence feel like a bother. Maven was always a wallflower, observing, analyzing, but not participating. She wasn’t social until she was forced to be or the rare occasion when she needed something from someone.
Every day like the working of a well-tuned clock Maven walked from school to the police station and encouraged the police to consider that my death was anything but intentional suicide. Eventually her never-ceasing presence wore down the lowly-ranked officers enough that she was given a seat with Assistant Police Chief Scotts.
When she wasn’t being a pest to the police she was learning how to investigate crime from library books she never checked out—choosing instead to be sprawled out in the libraries isle. Maven seemed to avoid being at home. Although she craved alone time, she did so in public places with semi-familiar faces. She was never much of a conversationalist, preferring to live inside her own head, and since my death she has retreated more and more.
Maven is the type of girl that doesn’t own a hair brush. After her hair air dries from the shower she simply runs her fingers through it, untwisting the tangles. It is never unyielding; ringlets form naturally at its exotic red-hued ends. Maven is the type of girl that other girls do not understand. She is strikingly different. She is a reserved introvert in a world of outspoken extroverts.
Even though I raised her, sometimes I still didn’t understand her. Maven always came home from hours of exploring the unknown with scrapes and bruises, bloody and happy. Growing up I was a social butterfly. I would dance from one group of friends to the next, spreading myself throughout the social landscape. Maven would much rather run through a field of waist high wild flowers or shimmy through the crack between boulders, in the hopes that a hidden cave exists, than attend a sweet sixteen birthday party.
Ever my daughter’s opposite, I wore make-up and appreciated the fancy things that life can provide. In the hallway of our two-story home I designed a wall of beautifully framed new and antique mirrors. It was a project that turned out exactly as I had hoped and Maven and I both saw the beauty in our own reflection. It wasn’t until after I passed from the Community Realm that I realized Maven wasn’t looking at her reflection the way that I did. She looks through her eyes, as if hoping to see the contents of her soul. She does not gander at her ungroomed eyebrows or nose dotted with freckles. Her gaze is deeper.
In some ways, I know she is very much my daughter. She didn’t allow herself to cry, keeping her emotions inside. She has always been forward thinking and I think she wanted to appear strong enough to be alone in a world based around community. Being emotional was an emblem of weakness to her. But one day the act became too much. She had just barely shut the front door behind her when I could see something was happening. Her hand clutched opened mail, I could tell it was an official document, but the substance was covered. She made her way to the couch and collapsed into it.
The sense of acknowledging her reality without me was in the air—thick with grief. I touched her shoulder and her feelings were now my feelings. We were stabilizing in a place between realms where I was connected in her thoughts and emotions. Her face had fallen into a deep sadness behind her shallow eyes. She looked numb, I felt numb. Then her throat tightened into a vice lock and mine wouldn’t swallow either. Her nostrils let out a small flare, trying to stop the emotion from overtaking her. There’s a burning in her nose and I could feel the fire in my own. The knot that locked her throat started to travel up her face, finding home behind her protected eyes. The paper slipped from her hand as her arms wrapped her knees in a comforting womb-like position. Her eyes could no longer ignore the sorrow knocking. She wept—openly and fully. Her tears were determined, like salmon jumping upstream. They were heavy like a desert rain storm. She cried for hours, getting all of her emotions to the surface, until her body would produce no more tears. Then angry took over.
“Mom!†She screamed for me. “You left me. You left me to face everything alone. You abandoned me like dad!â€
Her words cut me like a skilled surgeon, deep with precision. Then I see it. The paper Maven was clutching has rested from its slide on the stained wooden floors, my death certificate.
The next day and every day since she keeps an expressionless face in public—only her subtle and subconscious expressions surface with a squint in her eyes or downturned curve of her lips.
Her passion only seems to escape when Maven was pleading her case and explaining what type of person I was: happy, outgoing, generous, warm, strong and never, ever depressed. Dying by suicide would mean I put myself before Maven’s needs, which was unthinkable, she told the police over and over. This time, her story might be getting through though. Scotts was silent, but mulled over the similarities between Maven’s plea and his own many years earlier. The last murder trial in town was Scotts’ mother’s alleged suicide. Eventually, the murderer did admit his guilt and the trial concluded before the jury weighed in. The town prided itself the efficiency of the matter and did not dwell on the act of murder itself. Murder is a dirty word. A dirty thought.
Maven
Community Realm
Maven stopped her pleading when she saw Scotts’ look of memory not contemplation. “Who are you thinking about?†she asked.
Scotts was simultaneously thinking about the first time he met Maven and his mother’s own death. He chose to tell Maven the former of the two thoughts.
“You,†he said.
“I’m right here, why are you thinking about me?â€
“The first night I met you was to give you the news of your mother’s death,†he started.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, I was a bit frozen.â€
“That’s the worst part of my job, you know.â€
“It isn’t great being on the other end either.â€
“I know I’m not trying to be insensitive.â€
“What were you thinking about, about me?â€
“Did you know I was coming?â€
“What?†Maven’s questioned was mixed with anger. “How could I have known you were coming to give me the worst news of my life?â€
“I’m sorry, let me explain,†he said. “I don’t have to do this very often, but sometimes I do have to inform the family of a death. I have seen the surprise, shock and angry cross the faces of loved ones. But your face that night was different. I haven’t thought about it again, until you walked into my office.â€
“And what exactly did my face tell you?â€
“You were stocked, don’t get me wrong, but it was more. I think… I think you had a look of affirmation, like you knew it was coming but didn’t know when or how.â€
She stayed silent with contemplation at the weight of Scotts’ words. She calculated to gain his trust; she would be open and honest.
“I haven’t talked to anyone about this,†she said.
Scotts nodded his head, encouraging the young adult within his office to continue. “This is a safe space,†he said.
“Obviously, I didn’t know. I believed it wasn’t planned. But somehow that night I felt my mom’s presence. I felt a wave of peace shower over me and the thought, ‘you are going to be okay’ popped into my mind. I guess, when you knocked on the door, I just knew it was about her. I knew it was bad news. And I knew that I had felt her spirit earlier that night.â€
Maven despised being vulnerable so much that the arm hairs on her body fought against her comfortableness, poking themselves straight up.
“How did you feel once I told you that your mom had died?â€
“I just wanted to ask every question, get every thought answered, so I would know every detail.â€
“Why? How was that going to be helpful?â€
“Honesty, Scotts, I was hoping you would stop having answers. Then I could prove you were lying, that it wasn’t her you found. I remember I kept looking at the front door from the couch I was sitting on, I was waiting for her to walk in—like it was a sick joke.
“I know that feeling,†he said.
The flood of memories flew from Scotts’ mind into the air. He spoke his story for the first time in years.
Mela
Community Realm
Fisher’s hardened eyes kept my giggle in my throat. I was ready to laugh off his kiss attempt, playfully trying to decline his advances, but I stopped short. The coldness in his face scared me. Alcohol made him more brazen. His hand firmed around my arm, his fingers individually finding their placement on my body. Fisher’s grasp was commanding, but not strong enough bruise my toned bicep. He looked me straight in the eye, wanting me to mirror pleasure back at him. But I didn’t, I wouldn’t.
I straightened my spine and gathered my strength, pushing away from his clench. Fisher didn’t take kindly to my maneuvering. His demeanor instantly changed. His eyes looked glazed over. All I saw was the blackness of his soul when he backed me into the roof’s railing. It was when he had me cornered that I saw a gleam in his eyes. He had decided then that only one of us was going back to the party just one floor below us. It wasn’t me. He seemed super-human as he lifted me off my feet. I kicked and scratched him, realizing it might be my final act in this life. My efforts weren’t a match for his focus. I flew through the air backward, not knowing how many seconds I had until impact. Motion slowed as I noticed everything I passed on my way down. Curtains swayed under the flow of air conditioning inside hotel windows. Women were in various states of mid-dress. Men poured golden colored whiskey drinks in short glasses without ice cubes.
I didn’t let out a sound. I just thought about the only face I wanted to see, trying to imprint the red-toned ringlets of my daughter hair swirling on my mind instead of the wind’s force of my own brunette mane covering and uncovering my face.
My body was fresh in the ground when my daughter, Maven, marched into the Lyons Police Department. She demanded to know the status of the investigation into my death. The police looked befuddled. They spend more time enforcing curfew on teenagers than investigating anything more dangerous than money laundering. No one wanted to take this persistent 19-year-old girl seriously. Maven doesn’t question if I jumped or was pushed. Although she barely speaks to anyone in Lyons, I know she is plotting to clear my name and condemn the last person I was seen alive with, Fisher Charles.
In the beginning, there was an outpouring of support, pity, and homemade meals from the community. However, after a month or so the steam from fresh lasagna had cooled, and the supportive notes of encouragement had stopped being dropped off for the town’s only orphan. She didn’t want the community support and always made her visitor’s presence feel like a bother. Maven was always a wallflower, observing, analyzing, but not participating. She wasn’t social until she was forced to be or the rare occasion when she needed something from someone.
Every day like the working of a well-tuned clock Maven walked from school to the police station and encouraged the police to consider that my death was anything but intentional suicide. Eventually her never-ceasing presence wore down the lowly-ranked officers enough that she was given a seat with Assistant Police Chief Scotts.
When she wasn’t being a pest to the police she was learning how to investigate crime from library books she never checked out—choosing instead to be sprawled out in the libraries isle. Maven seemed to avoid being at home. Although she craved alone time, she did so in public places with semi-familiar faces. She was never much of a conversationalist, preferring to live inside her own head, and since my death she has retreated more and more.
Maven is the type of girl that doesn’t own a hair brush. After her hair air dries from the shower she simply runs her fingers through it, untwisting the tangles. It is never unyielding; ringlets form naturally at its exotic red-hued ends. Maven is the type of girl that other girls do not understand. She is strikingly different. She is a reserved introvert in a world of outspoken extroverts.
Even though I raised her, sometimes I still didn’t understand her. Maven always came home from hours of exploring the unknown with scrapes and bruises, bloody and happy. Growing up I was a social butterfly. I would dance from one group of friends to the next, spreading myself throughout the social landscape. Maven would much rather run through a field of waist high wild flowers or shimmy through the crack between boulders, in the hopes that a hidden cave exists, than attend a sweet sixteen birthday party.
Ever my daughter’s opposite, I wore make-up and appreciated the fancy things that life can provide. In the hallway of our two-story home I designed a wall of beautifully framed new and antique mirrors. It was a project that turned out exactly as I had hoped and Maven and I both saw the beauty in our own reflection. It wasn’t until after I passed from the Community Realm that I realized Maven wasn’t looking at her reflection the way that I did. She looks through her eyes, as if hoping to see the contents of her soul. She does not gander at her ungroomed eyebrows or nose dotted with freckles. Her gaze is deeper.
In some ways, I know she is very much my daughter. She didn’t allow herself to cry, keeping her emotions inside. She has always been forward thinking and I think she wanted to appear strong enough to be alone in a world based around community. Being emotional was an emblem of weakness to her. But one day the act became too much. She had just barely shut the front door behind her when I could see something was happening. Her hand clutched opened mail, I could tell it was an official document, but the substance was covered. She made her way to the couch and collapsed into it.
The sense of acknowledging her reality without me was in the air—thick with grief. I touched her shoulder and her feelings were now my feelings. We were stabilizing in a place between realms where I was connected in her thoughts and emotions. Her face had fallen into a deep sadness behind her shallow eyes. She looked numb, I felt numb. Then her throat tightened into a vice lock and mine wouldn’t swallow either. Her nostrils let out a small flare, trying to stop the emotion from overtaking her. There’s a burning in her nose and I could feel the fire in my own. The knot that locked her throat started to travel up her face, finding home behind her protected eyes. The paper slipped from her hand as her arms wrapped her knees in a comforting womb-like position. Her eyes could no longer ignore the sorrow knocking. She wept—openly and fully. Her tears were determined, like salmon jumping upstream. They were heavy like a desert rain storm. She cried for hours, getting all of her emotions to the surface, until her body would produce no more tears. Then angry took over.
“Mom!†She screamed for me. “You left me. You left me to face everything alone. You abandoned me like dad!â€
Her words cut me like a skilled surgeon, deep with precision. Then I see it. The paper Maven was clutching has rested from its slide on the stained wooden floors, my death certificate.
The next day and every day since she keeps an expressionless face in public—only her subtle and subconscious expressions surface with a squint in her eyes or downturned curve of her lips.
Her passion only seems to escape when Maven was pleading her case and explaining what type of person I was: happy, outgoing, generous, warm, strong and never, ever depressed. Dying by suicide would mean I put myself before Maven’s needs, which was unthinkable, she told the police over and over. This time, her story might be getting through though. Scotts was silent, but mulled over the similarities between Maven’s plea and his own many years earlier. The last murder trial in town was Scotts’ mother’s alleged suicide. Eventually, the murderer did admit his guilt and the trial concluded before the jury weighed in. The town prided itself the efficiency of the matter and did not dwell on the act of murder itself. Murder is a dirty word. A dirty thought.
Maven
Community Realm
Maven stopped her pleading when she saw Scotts’ look of memory not contemplation. “Who are you thinking about?†she asked.
Scotts was simultaneously thinking about the first time he met Maven and his mother’s own death. He chose to tell Maven the former of the two thoughts.
“You,†he said.
“I’m right here, why are you thinking about me?â€
“The first night I met you was to give you the news of your mother’s death,†he started.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, I was a bit frozen.â€
“That’s the worst part of my job, you know.â€
“It isn’t great being on the other end either.â€
“I know I’m not trying to be insensitive.â€
“What were you thinking about, about me?â€
“Did you know I was coming?â€
“What?†Maven’s questioned was mixed with anger. “How could I have known you were coming to give me the worst news of my life?â€
“I’m sorry, let me explain,†he said. “I don’t have to do this very often, but sometimes I do have to inform the family of a death. I have seen the surprise, shock and angry cross the faces of loved ones. But your face that night was different. I haven’t thought about it again, until you walked into my office.â€
“And what exactly did my face tell you?â€
“You were stocked, don’t get me wrong, but it was more. I think… I think you had a look of affirmation, like you knew it was coming but didn’t know when or how.â€
She stayed silent with contemplation at the weight of Scotts’ words. She calculated to gain his trust; she would be open and honest.
“I haven’t talked to anyone about this,†she said.
Scotts nodded his head, encouraging the young adult within his office to continue. “This is a safe space,†he said.
“Obviously, I didn’t know. I believed it wasn’t planned. But somehow that night I felt my mom’s presence. I felt a wave of peace shower over me and the thought, ‘you are going to be okay’ popped into my mind. I guess, when you knocked on the door, I just knew it was about her. I knew it was bad news. And I knew that I had felt her spirit earlier that night.â€
Maven despised being vulnerable so much that the arm hairs on her body fought against her comfortableness, poking themselves straight up.
“How did you feel once I told you that your mom had died?â€
“I just wanted to ask every question, get every thought answered, so I would know every detail.â€
“Why? How was that going to be helpful?â€
“Honesty, Scotts, I was hoping you would stop having answers. Then I could prove you were lying, that it wasn’t her you found. I remember I kept looking at the front door from the couch I was sitting on, I was waiting for her to walk in—like it was a sick joke.
“I know that feeling,†he said.
The flood of memories flew from Scotts’ mind into the air. He spoke his story for the first time in years.
It's not that you're trying to get too much in, it's that you're casually skipping over all kinds of important details.
Where are these people that "murder" is so impossible? I mean, even if they're a commune out in rural Montana, it's not impossible.
But wait, maybe it's some kinda fantasy setting? That would explain why this lady isn't all shocked and hung up on being a ghost. But I don't think so because there's no reason to think so.
But if she already knew ghosts are real and a typical thing, then why isn't Scotts interviewing her to get her testimony about what happened?
If they're living in a Socialist Utopia, then why does this lady work for a non-profit organization? You implied the existence of for-profit incorporation with that distinction, which is like, pretty non-Socialist.
You keep telling us that this place strives to be the super harmonious brigade, but the narrator is condescendingly hinting that it's not. I can't tell whether she's right because you haven't given us any insight into the world, and I can't tell if she's wrong because she's a self-absorbed twit (also possible!), or if she's just high on ectoplasm, being a fresh ghost and all.
None of this cheesy Lifetime Special Movie plot. I can't consider this Fisher bloke a serious Bad Guy as long as he gets this total cornball treatment in the narrative.
You're not telling a story, you're listing an order of events without much in the way of supporting context.
My advice is this:
Write 10,000 words of Maven living a Normal Day. Have her get dressed, and walk to school, and take in some classes, and eat lunch, and then go home, and have dinner with mom. Show what this "community realm" thing is that exists only in the title and no where else. If she's a bit of a weird kid then you can show her not really getting along with other kids. If they're living on a commune then you can show a bunch of people going out to the communal farm, and maybe there won't be any money, anywhere, ever; that would be a nice subtle hint that their socioeconomics are different than ours.
I think you're basically writing The Giver set in the Hindu Six Paths, but that's just me wildly guessing.
You might be trying to set it in 1980s Ukraine, I just don't know.
Where are these people that "murder" is so impossible? I mean, even if they're a commune out in rural Montana, it's not impossible.
But wait, maybe it's some kinda fantasy setting? That would explain why this lady isn't all shocked and hung up on being a ghost. But I don't think so because there's no reason to think so.
But if she already knew ghosts are real and a typical thing, then why isn't Scotts interviewing her to get her testimony about what happened?
If they're living in a Socialist Utopia, then why does this lady work for a non-profit organization? You implied the existence of for-profit incorporation with that distinction, which is like, pretty non-Socialist.
You keep telling us that this place strives to be the super harmonious brigade, but the narrator is condescendingly hinting that it's not. I can't tell whether she's right because you haven't given us any insight into the world, and I can't tell if she's wrong because she's a self-absorbed twit (also possible!), or if she's just high on ectoplasm, being a fresh ghost and all.
None of this cheesy Lifetime Special Movie plot. I can't consider this Fisher bloke a serious Bad Guy as long as he gets this total cornball treatment in the narrative.
You're not telling a story, you're listing an order of events without much in the way of supporting context.
My advice is this:
Write 10,000 words of Maven living a Normal Day. Have her get dressed, and walk to school, and take in some classes, and eat lunch, and then go home, and have dinner with mom. Show what this "community realm" thing is that exists only in the title and no where else. If she's a bit of a weird kid then you can show her not really getting along with other kids. If they're living on a commune then you can show a bunch of people going out to the communal farm, and maybe there won't be any money, anywhere, ever; that would be a nice subtle hint that their socioeconomics are different than ours.
I think you're basically writing The Giver set in the Hindu Six Paths, but that's just me wildly guessing.
You might be trying to set it in 1980s Ukraine, I just don't know.