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It began with a wrong number. My cell ringing, three or four times, maybe more, before I woke and realised it wasn’t a dream. I couldn’t be sure how long I had been out. All I knew, was my head felt like Babe Ruth had used it to hit a home run at the top of the ninth; and my body, I wasn’t sure how my body felt — I couldn’t even be sure I had brought the right one home with me. I felt as if my arms and legs had been ripped off during the night, but a quick examination confirmed they were all present and correct, only I wasn’t sure they had been put back in the right order. Had I been in a fight? It wouldn’t be the first time, and certainly not the last — but as my head began to clear, I remembered the divorce papers, served while I grabbed brunch at my local Diner. Recalled the feelings of loss, regret and no longer belonging to anyone and then a beep from my cell as I looked down at a large, legal looking envelope doing its best to outstare me as it lay on the table’s surface. The screen yelled back at me — Ava it cried. Beautiful, sexy, caring Ava. Two out of three ain’t bad, but for me, it was never enough. Her texting at that precise moment was no coincidence; I knew her too well for that, but she would argue otherwise — yet another battle to lose. There’s a limit to just how many you can forfeit before running out of ammunition and finding yourself physically and emotionally battered to a pulp, before having to surrender and ultimately lose the war. This envelope was my white flag, my ‘Treaty of Versailles’ moment.
She had to be close by, to have picked this precise moment? I cast my eye around the Diner. Neither large nor small, it was like the food, average. Seated at my usual vantage point — trade learned from years on the force and now part of my DNA — gave me a view of each and every one of the Diner’s customers as they sat at rectangular tables randomly scattered over a worn and stained parquet floor. Stains, that if you looked long and hard enough resembled faces, or perhaps countries; maybe those of customers, many of whom were immigrants that contributed to the district’s transient population? It has a name, seeing images that don’t exist — pareidolia. The sort of information you come across on the net, only I read it in a newspaper — I don’t do computers, you can’t slap a fly with a laptop. I had been in the waiting room of the Department Medical Examiner’s Office — a notable day, sat waiting for my fitness to serve to be assessed. It was a column about the ‘76 Viking mission NASA had sent to Mars. In some of the pictures sent back to mission control, there were large rocks that appeared to have faces on them. Some fruitcakes saw this as a sign of a long-lost civilisation. Apparently, research in Tokyo had established that people who did this had high levels of anxiety, suffered from negative thoughts and were inclined to be unstable. Glass half-empty characters. I’m more of a glass empty type myself — the reason I was sitting in that particular room. I saw no sign of Ava, just ordinary Joe’s taking onboard the fuel that would help them grind out the long, relentless hours of another dreary working day. I would have seen her enter. From where I sat I could observe all who came in or left by the slowly revolving door that hoovered up its customers, before processing and spilling them back out onto the dirty sidewalk, this morning wet and icy from an overnight snow shower. Most of my fellow diners were men, seated alone — perhaps waiting for their white flags. For my drama to reach its conclusion before, one-by-one, their turn came to grace the stage? After I had left, I had walked — walked for hours, confused and without any sense of direction until I found myself in a bar. The type that always had one of those sour-looking barmen — like a teetotaler with an inferiority complex. I needed warmth. I needed solace. I knew the direction I was taking, and it was downhill all the way. I had ordered a couple of shots of Blackbush, downed them in quick succession, slipped the barman a fifty, and asked for a bottle. He took one from below the counter, placed it in a scruffy brown paper bag and handed it to me as if he was saying “you dirty northern bastard”. Years ago, while still on the force, towards the end when I bathed in the sauce, I had been on the Lower East Side to meet a snitch. It had started to rain, and I slipped into a run down Irish bar to escape the deluge. I never went into a bar without craving for a drink; two would lead to three, three to four and four to seven. You can do the math. Beside me, sat a worn out barfly — balancing on a stool, while at the same time spilling against the bar rail — defying gravity. He noticed the Bushmills. “That’s a Proddie drink you have there? He said, in an accent as thick as the clouds on an Irish summers day. He took a long, slow slurp of his drink, most of it running down his chin, his neck as it headed due south. This jerk was hydrating and showering at the same time and had multi-tasking down to an art form. I watched as he took a long slow swig of air; he looked like a drunken toad trying unsuccessfully to snare a passing fly. He continued, “Jameson’s. Now that’s a Fenian drink”. If I had a dead president for every New York Paddy, who had given me the same advice, I would no longer worry about the safe police pension I had flushed down the John. The result of my dishonourable discharge from New York’s finest. Usually, I ignore barfly’s, especially those in such an advanced state of maceration. But on this occasion, I was on auto-pilot. I had turned toward him. “Yer man, Mr Jameson, … John”, with an emphasis on the first two words, “was a Presbyterian Scotsman. That pint you were trying to drink — well his friend, Arthur was also a Protestant.” Were they contemporaries, let alone friends? I wasn’t sure, but I hadn’t told him that. “He started the fucking brewery with money inherited from his godfather, a Church of Ireland Archbishop.” I picked up his glass and emptied what remained of its contents over his head. “That’s the wash finished, ‘fraid I don’t do blow-drys”. I had got up and walked out, back into the rain. Tonight, I hadn’t the time or the inclination for fun and games with this particular asshole. I just got up and left, walked the short distance to a nearby rank, and took a cab back to my building. And that’s another thing that always bugged me, why the fuck is it called a building when the damn thing is already built? |
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Ellen Brock 
I think you’re starting in the wrong place. Why not start the previous night and tell the story as it happens? Starting with him waking up (Ellen would say it’s cliche and over-used) leads to all sorts of tense difficulties because so much of the scene you’re describing happened in the past, so you end up with lots of hads and it gets really messy. Having said that, it started well for me and i was enjoying it, until we got to Ava and then it got really confusing and stayed that way. Who is Ava? Is the wife, or someone else? In my opinion, the whole section from ‘ She had to be close by…’ to ‘that particular room’ needs to go. It is distracting and unnecessary and too confusing.
I think you have a great character, good voice and the makings of a good story here. Some good editing will peel away the stuff that’s getting in the way of the story and carry the reader with you. Right now, you’re over-writing, and it’s getting in the way. 4+ sentences to describe a minor character taking a sip of his drink is overdoing it. I would definitely like to read more of this, but you’re making me work too hard as a reader to figure out what happened when and to stay with your train of thought.
Hi, Jennifer.
Just a few thoughts before I get back on the road.
I think the start becomes more relevant when you read the end of the chapter, something I couldn’t show with the word count restriction. I can’t see the confusion with Ava; the divorce papers being served on him while eating, her texting at that precise moment — I thought it added up to her being his wife?
Thanks for your view of my main character, and I’ll hold my hands up to over-writing: Elmore Leonard said that the first thing to do when finished with a piece was to reread it and cut out all the writing — sage advice.
The Barfly was an illustration of how grumpy the main character is, how he can too easily be rubbed up the wrong way by life’s unimportant events and has a chip the size of New Jersey on his shoulder.
I think you have the same problem I do. You have a story to tell, but this might not be the right beginning for it. Or maybe there is just too much in the first 1000 years that isn’t directly related to the conflict of the story, and should be either moved or removed. I tend to think that chopping out some extra words would help immediately. In my own beginning-writer-wannabe opinion, you write some very nice lines about things like Mars that seem very out of sync with the rest of the story. Take out some of the extra noise so I can see the main story more clearly.
For example, in the very first paragraph there are several lines used to tell us the main character has a headache. Some are very good, but I think you would be better off just using what you think is the best one and getting rid of the rest.
I did get a bit lost at times, but that may have been as much to do with the formatting (which I know was not your fault). But it might be nice to pepper in a little more snippets of dialogue to separate the long paragraphs (and let my mind breathe a bit).
I’d see if you could rewrite this part and make it 1/2 as long or shorter. As you said, there is better stuff to come, see if you can get to it quicker — and lose a bit of the confusion and extra words on the way.
Good luck!
I think you have the same problem I do. You have a story to tell, but this might not be the right beginning for it. Or maybe there is just too much in the first 1000 words that isn’t directly related to the conflict of the story, and should be either moved or removed. I tend to think that chopping out some extra words would help immediately. In my own beginning-writer-wannabe opinion, you write some very nice lines about things like Mars that seem very out of sync with the rest of the story. Take out some of the extra noise so I can see the main story more clearly.
For example, in the very first paragraph there are several lines used to tell us the main character has a headache. Some are very good, but I think you would be better off just using what you think is the best one and getting rid of the rest.
I did get a bit lost at times, but that may have been as much to do with the formatting (which I know was not your fault). But it might be nice to pepper in a little more snippets of dialogue to separate the long paragraphs (and let my mind breathe a bit).
I’d see if you could rewrite this part and make it 1/2 as long or shorter. As you said, there is better stuff to come, see if you can get to it quicker — and lose a bit of the confusion and extra words on the way.
Good luck!
I’m wondering if you’re trying to go for a noir atmosphere. Having your MC call this other guy an asshole actually makes your MC come across as an asshole.
You wanted to portray him as a grumpy guy and you succeeded. But the problem is I feel nothing for him. You have to do something early on that causes me to feel sympathy or empathy as a reader. Now he’s just an asshole getting a divorce, which he probably deserved.
You can’t wait till the end of the chapter to make the beginning more relevant. You need to give us a hook in the opening. Otherwise we will put the book back on the shelf before finishing the first page. You may have a great story, but the teaser for your movie is just not strong enough yet. What could you put on page one to make us buy the book on the spot?
Your title and first three sentences could loose me right there. Which would be a great shame, because there are so so many less off-putting, more intriguing, places in that too long paragraph that could have piqued my interest, without a cliche in sight. No doubt “the start becomes more relevant when you read the end of the chapter” but that’s too late for impatient readers who got the wrong impression from the opening – and I’d re-think the title too.
I like your style and the strong voice of your narrating character. I wonder whether it would appeal to women as much. Maybe you’ve got that covered with a trait that appeals to them too? Or set him up for a satisfying fall? Or maybe I get the other half all wrong?
And if you loose me you might lose me as well.
The title is only a work in progress. I haven’t decided on the title as yet. Erin said not to leave the piece untitled for ease of traceability.