Match #13

[James]

Write Chapter One of a Novel.

Deadline: Tuesday, 2nd June

That's it. We want you to write the first chapter of a novel. There's no other restriction. What we're looking for is that you know what makes a beginning, what makes a good first chapter to draw a reader in. Essentially, we want to get to the end of your chapter and then be disappointed that the rest of the book hasn't been written.

Also, as an added aside, one of the reasons we've left this match till last is the hope that someone might go on and then write the rest of the novel.

[ASGetty ((Zovo))]

1.

Christine’s eyes snapped open. Particles of dust danced on a shaft of light above her head swirling and churning on her slow, deep breaths while ghosts of dreams retreated from the oncoming daylight. Staring at the oxidized red-brown I-beams supporting the vaulted ceiling, Christine tried to remember the previous night. Where was she?

Her body shivered, ever so slightly, beneath the blankets; the movement bringing realization that she was naked but for her panties and a pair of socks. She pulled the old dollar-store comforter up to her chin for warmth. The smell of cologne in the coarse-grain fabric against her bare skin struck a familiar chord as a chill breeze pushed through threadbare patches and stood tiny hairs on end. Todd’s loft. She was in Todd’s loft. She didn’t recall falling asleep there.

Christine sat up slowly, silently. Alert, like an animal expecting danger she listened to the muffled sound of voices coming from the level below. She paused for a moment, sitting listlessly and then swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her socked feet felt the cold through the cotton when they came in contact with the metal floor. Finally, as though having just mustered the courage, she stood allowing the blanket to fall away from her naked body. The morning air immediately assaulted her, raising goose-pimples on her arms and chest descending like an army of spiders across the flat of her stomach down the length of her legs to the floor. Christine shivered and made her way to the window. The hopper style frame, one of a bank of twelve covering the south wall, was cracked open at the top, as usual. She pushed it closed with the slow grind of aging metal.

Frosted glass, permanently darkened with decades of dirt and soot together with the metal floors, I-beamed ceilings and cat-walk staircases, the echoes of a previous incarnation as an industrial warehouse reverberated through Todd’s mid-town home. Christine stared at the glass, trying to imagine the river on the other side. Trying to believe the waters there weren’t just as dark as the dusty pane before her which reflected her image back like an old-timey photograph; black and white and grainy.

She checked her reflection stretching both arms in front of her and bringing her hands together she analyzed their length, width, the marking and the way her fingers lined up. Then similarly she checked her legs, first the right; long and slender, harkening back to her high school dance classes. Then the left. Christine noted the scar on her knee, and old injury from falling off of her bicycle as a child. She smiled at the memory as it washed over her and twisted her body to get a look at her lower back. There, just above her left buttock was her ironic tattoo reading “Bad Decision” in fancy calligraphy; she frowned at that one even as a wave of relief slowly built inside of her. Her dirty purple hair cropped at the shoulder and dutifully sculpted by the sandman’s loving hands, her eyes brown and skeptical. Her face still bore the memory of old acne scars and her teeth were all present and accounted for. She cupped her exposed breasts in her hands and nodded to her reflection, satisfied that everything was as she remembered.

Christine moved back to the bed, scooping an oversized shirt from the floor and pulling it over her head. It hung to her mid-thigh and smelled like man-sweat; and not the good kind. But she couldn’t seem to locate any of her own clothing at the moment, so it would have to do. Kneeling beside the bed she extracted a small duffel from beneath the frame and unzipped it, withdrawing a scrapbook and pen.

Sitting on the floor, her eyes moved furiously across the pages as she scanned the past few days’ entries. Memories roared by, places, faces, names; everything she could recall from the past five or six days. Nothing seemed out of place. Smiling to herself she flipped to the first blank page and scribbled an entry:

Still have the tattoo.

She tucked the scrapbook back into her bag and made her way down the stairs to the lower level. The voices she’d heard earlier belonged to a pair of men on an old thirteen inch tube television resting on the kitchen island. Todd sat in a barstool before the TV in sweatpants and a torn t-shirt, eating a bowl of Cheerios with cranberry juice poured over it. It was a taste he’d acquired when the refrigerator stopped working well enough to keep milk from going sour.

“What are you watching?” She asked, staring at the screen where two men appeared to be arguing the esoteric intricacies of some unknown musical genre.

Todd didn’t answer; rather he shoved another spoonful into his mouth and crunched loudly. Christine approached cautiously and reached for the box of cereal, pulling a dry handful and eating the little O’s one at a time from her palm. She looked again at the screen. The picture quality was terrible, and it looked as though Todd was playing it from an old VHS tape.

“Seriously,” she said between O’s, “What is this shit?”

“Don’t know.” The words came with flecks of cranberry Cheerio, “Found it.”

“Where?” She asked cautiously. Something wasn’t right. Todd’s normally spiky blonde hair was laid flat against his head, a sign he hadn’t been out of bed for long, and the puncture marks in his lip showed he hadn’t even bothered to put his affects in. Crass and crude as any self-styled punk, Todd wasn’t without vanity.

“Out back.” The screen flickered and Todd swatted the TV heavily.

“In the dumpster?”

“No.” He turned away from the television, facing her for the first time since she’d descended the stairs, his expression was dour, his eyes rubbed red and bloodshot. “Not in the dumpster. Next to it. As in, `beside it.’ Nearby. In the general proximity. Shit, Chris, what kind of dumpster diving trash do you think I am?” There was hurt in his voice.

Christine stammered, “Todd, no, I didn’t mean—“

“…And what’s with all the questions this morning? Huh?” Todd suddenly exploded, throwing his spoon at the flickering screen. It ricocheted past her head and clattered to the metal floor. She flinched instinctively from the airborne cutlery.

He continued, standing now, his bowl left all alone on the island. “This is my house. This is where I live. Do you understand?”

Christine wanted to nod, wanted to say something soothing, to calm him to understand this sudden outburst; but all she could manage was a slow retreat, mouth agape.

“I can bring whatever I want inside because it’s my house.” He was gesturing erratically thumping his chest with his palm, “If I want to bring some piece of shit TV into my house, then I will.”

Christine didn’t know what to do. Hands raised like a lion tamer, she continued to back up. She maneuvered slowly around the kitchen island, allowing it to fill the space between herself and his madness. She felt the creep of déjà vu, a memory of this conversation having played a hundred times before. He threw his bowl into the dingy sink and she could hear the ceramic shatter. Christine swallowed hard tried to calm herself.

“Todd,” she said, trying to make herself heard above his tirade. There were tears welling in his eyes, “You need to stop, Todd. This doesn’t end well.”

“Who is he?” Todd shouted, his voice cracking.

“Who is who?” She shouted back, her voice rose instinctively in response to his accusation despite her deliberate efforts to remain calm. Is that what this was about, another man? Their history had been turbulent, sure, but in this scene whose wasn’t. Everyone knew everyone else. Couples came together and broke apart on a daily basis; bumping into one another like strung out ships in the smoke-filled night. Everyone slept around. Six months ago she’d moved in Todd mostly out of convenience. Money was tight, and she’d needed a place to settle for a while. She didn’t stay every night, and usually not for but a day or two at a time, but Todd had allowed her to pay her share with whatever she’d had available. They’d had an understanding, she’d thought; but they certainly weren’t exclusive. The ironic thing was that she’d been more faithful to their arrangement than any relationship she’d ever had; and now this. She continued to backpedal, choking out unintelligible defenses.

“You know!” He shouted, lunging across the island to grab her before she could back away. He missed and flailing arms sent the old television crashing to the floor in heap of cracked plastic and broken glass. Todd didn’t seem to notice. “Who’s Nick, Chris?”

The name brought a sudden onslaught of memories. Or memories of memories. . . Dreams? It caught her off guard, “How do you know about Nick?”

The suggested admission seemed to calm him slightly. His face was red and she noticed the marks on his arm. It was clear he’d been worrying about this for a while and tried to chemically calm himself. “You talk to him, you know. In your sleep.”

“What?”

“Yeah! I thought it was just a weird dream the first time, we all have strange dreams, right?” He was pointing to his head with his ring finger, “But it’s been every. Single. Night. This. Week.” He punctuated each word by slamming his palm upon the island.

Christine didn’t know what shocked her more; that Todd was losing it over a name she’d said in her sleep, or that she’d apparently been sleeping in his bed for a week. She didn’t remember being there that long. In fact, she could swear she’d fallen asleep in the backseat of an abandoned Suburban last night. It was the pills. It has to be the pills.

“Todd, relax.” She tried again to reign in her own voice, “Todd, it’s nothing. Nick is nothing.” He was staring at her, hard. “It’s the pills, Todd. The sleep pills, they give me fucked up dreams, alright?”

For a moment he looked like he bought it. For a moment. “Don’t you…” He began to make his way around the island, fast. He was coming after her, “Don’t you lie to me you filthy—“

Christine saw it all a moment before it happened, “No!” She saw his path, she saw his bare feet, and she saw the broken glass as his foot came down upon it. It was the same as last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. The glass bit into his flesh and he stumbled, tripping over his own feet. Todd lost his footing and with a shriek careened headfirst into the metal staircase, his skull cracking against the corner with a sickening crunch.

“Oh, God, no.” Christine rushed to his side, forcing her hands into the pocket of his sweatpants, in a fruitless search for his phone. She lifted his head from the stair and cradled it in her lap, balling up excess shirt-length and pressing it hard against the wound. His eyes were wide and terrified, and thick, crimson blood ran out over her hands. Todd’s body lurched with spasms.

Christine called out for help, hoping her voice would carry beyond the open window upstairs, knowing full well that such cries were rarely answered in this part of town. Despite that, she continued yelling until her voice grew hoarse and Todd’s body fell still.

Christine laid his head in her lap, no longer applying pressure and curled down so that her forehead rested against his left ear. She did not cry. She only shook her head in meek surrender.

“Not again.” She whispered to no one in particular. “Not again.”

[Kaez]

Journey through the West
Chapter 1

The Western Continent was a strange place as far as weather was concerned. Quite a warm and comfortable autumn season only to be followed by some of the coldest winters in the world. Especially in the province of Terra. But Eldri Moonriver still thought of it as home despite those miserable months, as she sat reading underneath a large oak tree. Though she couldn’t help but feel oppressed by it, which was only natural for an elf of the West. Even for Eldri, who had been raised by humans for most of her life in the Grey City of Erde. Well, her mother had of course been their for her first forty years. But then the Akkad Empire came, and she was murdered during one of their purges.

So then the clerics of the goddess Elendra, one of the Twelve Patrons of the West, had raised and educated her for the next seventy years. After the Akkad had been driven back south by the Eletanian Empire, of course. The instinctual elven wanderlust had set in then, and she had been allowed to leave. She hadn’t gone far though. While a few smaller clans had once made Terra their home, Eldri had even interacted with them a few times, the Akkad occupation and subsequent purges had eventually scared them further north, away from the south. Eldri had almost had to leave too, before the liberation. Even then, while the Akkad left, any clan that could have taken her in did not come, still too frightened to come so close to the border with Akkad.

She had been able to leave the oppressive urban environment of Erde, however. She moved north, to a little village called The Grey Rest. She had gotten a job at its inn, run by an old veteran of the Imperial Army, named Korath. Gruff exterior when she had first met him, but it had only taken a night for the gentle soul underneath to be unveiled. She had also quickly befriended two of his younger workers, Talia Shay and Connor Hawley, relatively close to her own age by human standards. Not only that, since she only tended the inn’s bar in the evenings, she had whole days to herself after finishing her morning chores. Meaning she and her new friends explored the fields around the village. Sometimes she would even go out on her own into The Vale. . A large, ancient forest, said to house a village used by elf clans for meetings and trading. She would often go in there, find a tree to sit under, and spend hours on end reading. All in the hope that she would meet an elf that would invite her to join their clan.

But it had never happened. Even now as she sat underneath the now reddish autumn leaves of an elm tree, there were no signs on any elves. She sighed, and returned her attention to the book that currently had her attention. Rise of the Dragon Emperor, a historical retelling of the rise of Eletan’s immortal ruler, Dartan. Eldri loved history in general, but she had a very specific fascination with Dartan. Despite being so young at the time she would always remember the day he had rode into Erde on the back of a dragon. Heralding the arrival of his army with dragon fire from both his mount and his very hands. Eldri looked up from her book and closed her eyes, falling deep into the memory.

“Eldri! Is that you sitting over there?” The voice jarred her from her reminiscing. She frowned as her eyes opened again. She shot a look towards the voices direction, to see Talia, bright ginger hair just barely visible amongst the red and orange leaves, walking towards her. She was waving wildly, as if trying to grab the young elf’s attention. She dog-eared her spot in the book, closing it. She slowly came to her feet and stretched out her slender skinny arms. Then, clutching the copy of Rise to her chest, she walked towards Talia. As she approached the rest of Talia’s features came into clear view. Her mother and father had emigrated to Eletan from the Northern Continent, moving to Terra shortly after Talia had been born. They both had died when the Akkad Empire in the south had briefly occupied Terra ten years ago. She herself had almost been sent back to Akkad to be a slave, were it not for the timely intervention of Emperor Dartan’s liberating host.

“Thank the Twelve,” Talia said as Eldri finally reached normal speaking distance. “Another hour of looking and I would’ve gone back to get Korath and Connor for a proper search party.” Eldri frowned, a little put off by this bit of news.

“I’m sorry Talia,” she responded, looking away sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to make you worry like that.” This timid response was followed by Talia pulling her into very tight hug. Eldri could barely breathe she was being squeezed so hard.

“Just don’t make a habit out of it you adorable pointy eared little minx you.” Eldri managed to breathe in enough air to let out a nervous little chuckle. Then she started to try squirming her way out of the hug. Thankfully Talia got the message, and released her.

“Come on,” Talia said, turning around. “Korath will never let it go if we’re late just once.” Eldri nodded and followed Talia as she began walking away. They walked through the Vale towards the village in relative silence for several minutes, until Eldri finally decided to break it.

“So did I miss anything while I was out here with my thoughts?”

“Oh nothing much,” Talia responded, shooting a wink back at Eldri. “Just a Twelve-be damned squad of Forgotten.” Eldri cocked an eyebrow up, shooting an unseen disbelieving glance at the mess of red hair flowing down Talia’s back.

“It’s not nice to lie Talia.” She was sure her friend was just egging her on, trying to make her feel bad for not spending their day off of the week with her and Connor. Members of the Forgotten Legion were known to pass through the Grey Rest as they traveled. Eldri had even seen a few scouts here and there. Never a full squad though.

“I’m not lying El,” Talia responded back, not turning this time. “Six legionnaires with two agents leading them. Stopped for a quick resupply and then kept moving, said they had business up north in Culver.”

“If Connor and Korath say it’s true, then I’ll believe you.” Talia did turn around this time, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she merely stuck her tongue out at Eldri playfully, then turned around and kept moving.

“See any other elves this time?” Eldri hung her head a little. Talia knew her far too well.

“You wouldn’t have found me if I had.” She said, gazing away from Talia’s back to see a couple of deer watching them cautiously from a distance. She gave them a nervous little wave, but frowned as they darted away when she moved her hand.

“Don’t even joke about that El.” Talia actually stopped this time and turned around. Eldri just barely managed to react and stop fast enough as she looked her friend right in the eye.

“You’ve got a good thing going here,” Talia continued, “yeah the tavern work is hard. Also the village can be boring sometimes. But you’d miss it out there in the wilderness.” Eldri didn’t respond to Talia’s words at first, taking a moment to think on if her scarlet tressed friend was right.

“I don’t know Talia,” she finally said, continuing to walk on, past Talia towards a break between the trees that led out to their little village. “Don’t you think about leaving sometimes and seeing the world? Not just the rest of the Empire, but the whole world?”

“I do, El, believe me,” Talia said from behind her. Eldri broke through the forest and walked down to a lone tree sitting beside a slightly steep hilly drop. She reached it and looked down. Below was the Grey Rest. She could just make out Korath standing at the door of the inn, sweeping the front porch. Home, for now.

“Look El,” Eldri looked to her left to see Talia standing next to her. “The thought of adventure doesn’t just excite me, it also frightens me. Who knows what else is out there? Why, just the other day I heard the Queen of the North eats little girls like us to maintain her youth and beauty.” Eldri couldn’t help but laugh. Talia knew how to ease the tension in a conversation, that was for sure.

“Maybe one day you, Connor and I can leave. But not now.” With that, Talia began carefully walking down the semi steep hill towards the village. Eldri watched her go, thinking about what she had said.

Maybe Talia was right, but Eldri still couldn’t get the feelings of wanderlust out her mind. She was beginning to tire of this tiny village and the same valley and forests around it. She needed to leave. But she was still aware that probably wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Sighing, she admitted defeat and followed Talia down the hill, silently praying to the Twelve.

“Gods, please send me a way out of here.”

[James]

Team Zovo

Overall, I thought this was a decent first chapter. I have to say, though, that the first half seemed a lot stronger than the second half.

In the first half, you introduced Christine and a mystery with a leisurely pace that is always good to see. The older I get, the more I prefer a slower pace to the start of a novel. Holmes and Watson in their rooms, Joe Spork discussing his father's socks, a crew arriving on some distant planet. Sure, kicking off with action is eye-catching, but I think it's nice to start slow and seed the atmosphere.

Your start gave me that. You slowly introduced us to Christine and you hinted at that mystery. Straight away, I'm curious about why the tattoo might not have been there. It helps that the writing is strong. There's not too much for me to fault in that first half.

The second half wasn't bad, but it was a little more jumpy. Whereas the start had a great sense of realism to it, Todd felt just a little bit over the top. Not by much. People with anger issues are often abrupt and I think that's what you were trying to portray. But he was just a smidge too far and that took me out of the realism a little bit.

It felt like you really wanted to hammer home a mystery element to provide a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers are great for making a reader want more. But I much prefer to be invested in a story because I like/care about the characters, interested in the plot, or falling in love with the writing style. Cliffhangers are a bit like a band aid.

Still, it was a decent start. It didn't quite hook me; I read this a few days ago and I'm not yearning to find out more, but also, it wasn't a pain to read. Nice work.

Team Kaez

What I'm about to say is one of the most common things I have said in reviews over seven years of AWR. Do not throw a whole bunch of meaningless names at the reader in the first three paragraphs. Why? Because they are meaningless. There's literally nothing to help me understand what is happening. I don't know all these bickering empires and to tell me their names and nothing else is pointless.

I actually think the gluttony of names is a symptom of an underlying issue. You wanted to show off a cool idea: an Elf who due to war is now feeling isolated from her culture, missing a sense of belonging. But you went about it the wrong way. Instead of showing us her isolation, you spelt it out. “She used to live here, then there was war, and then we moved and now she feels crappy and is looking for other Elves because oh god it's so dull.” You spelt that all out to me.

Your first chapter instead could have been showing us all that in a far more subtle way. Eldri's alone out in the woodlands, while the rest of the town is enjoying some sort of celebration or anniversary about the Akkad's defeat. Then Eldri spots something between the trees, she chases it, getting really excited. And it turns out to just be some animal and she's devastated. Talia then goes and find Eldri to bring her back to the festival. Eldri goes begrudgingly.

If you get the narrative right, writing at a more personal level without spelling everything out, then you have a way more interesting first chapter. We get to see Eldri the character, who feels lost and alone. We get to learn about the history of the Akkad Empire through the festival, rather than having the narrator just tell us about it. Really, what I'm getting at is “show, don't tell”, but I wanted to explain it in a more helpful way.

There are some other issues, but that's the main thing, I think.



Again, the actual outcome of the result is kind of meaningless now, but I'm going to give the point to Team Zovo.

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Team Zovo:

I only made one in-line note while judging this piece, it was this one:

SPOILER: Click to show

Everything else was pretty solid. I definitely came away interested to see more, which was the main goal for this topic. It had kind of a Twelve Monkeys vibe, in that Christine obviously had access to some sort of time travel or prescience, but she also didn't seem to have much of a handle on it, mentally. She's confused and uncertain, and seems to only gradually remember/uncover exactly what she's doing. That's a strong starting point, and I liked it a lot.

Apart from that interesting element, the characters were kind of mediocre. Keeping up with the Twelve Monkeys comparison, Christine was more interesting when she was groggy but directional, whereas at the end she seemed more lucid but also more overwhelmed. And Todd is obviously just a shitty person, but not in a way that's particularly interesting to watch. The story was short, though, so I don't blame you too much for that. If this really was part of a book, there's still lots of time to grow the characters.

Overall, the concept hook was good, but I think it could have benefited from a bit of style, a bit of panache, as well, to make it more your own. I read the story about an hour before writing this, and honestly there aren't a lot of images that stand out really vividly in my mind. Which is not the end of the world: like I said, the plot was good, and the ease of read as well. I just generally think if you can slip in something idiolectic--a witticism or a particular interesting image--it makes hooks "hookier," and it makes short fiction as a whole much stronger.

Team Kaez:

Why do I care about this story?

That's what the complaint is always going to boil down to with this kind of telling now showing. I don't even need to read James' review to know that he'll have asked the same thing. We're given a lot of names, and a lot of backstory, purely as exposition, and it just doesn't work.

Even if the same information had been conveyed as an anecdote, with the narrator telling a story within the story, that would have been better. That's how "once upon a times" work. But to just have this sort of wishy-washy, exposited internal recollection ... sorry, it just doesn't make for a good read. The information is all one big non sequitur.

On a more granular level, there was nothing particularly wrong with the writing itself. It just didn't really get a chance to be interesting because it was couched in this banal, go-nowhere plot. Find a more interesting premise--or not even that; just find a more elegant way to set the premise up--and an overall better story will follow.


Point to Team Zovo