[Grimace]

This is the ending of chapter 2, I'm about 90 000 words in, but I always liked this segment (it certainly helped me get into grad school for writing). The novel is first person past tense (though I kind of use a meta-ish past tense that is like the present tense at times), and very strongly built around my protagonist's voice. Enjoy.


I remembered the names. I remembered some of the names. Men she’d met at the comedy shows, the bars, the lounges. Most of them had seen her show, thought she was great, or pretty in her short dress, or maybe just that she was small enough for them to wrap entirely in their arms. I didn’t know what they thought. Only one of her boyfriends had also been a comic. He was really funny, amazingly funny. He was funnier than her, by far, and I’d seen his videos on Youtube, and they were great. Forty thousand views type of great. His name was Avery Aberdeen. A comedian’s name. So Lizzie Archer and Avery Aberdeen started dating when I was eleven. One year later Avery moved in, created an arrangement. This was when we lived in DC in the shitty suite. I learned that Avery was still funny in person, but sometimes—like when he realized he had been screwed by a big venue out of his money—he wasn’t all together completely funny. Even the funniest funny could slip. I remembered his red hair, his eyes a titch too close together, and he was short and wide with his huge grin appearing out of nowhere and then everything was hilarious and woes were forgotten, and could everyone not see his huge grin? But when they fought it got weird. At the time I didn’t understand why, never grasped the peculiar venom in their fights, how they were so full of attrition. It was what they did. How they entertained. I crafted this theory over time. Something about making people laugh, the sarcasm, especially the sarcasm, and the understanding of thinking and situations. They were great at mean.
So. Somewhere along the lines of my Mom saying And that Kids Network promo? That was sick, and you didn’t mean it. You’re a fucking shill, Avery threw her against the cupboard, and her head actually went through the cheap pressboard, right into the row of wine glasses. So she was done, and I was sitting on the couch playing Super Mario Bros, focused on the bright screen, and the tiny green mushrooms, the koopas, the raccoon cape, the fireballs. Avery had won, and he knew it, and I knew it, and Mom’s face was cut in a few places, and she had on a thin white shirt, which was the worst fucking colour for right then. She slid down to the floor with her eyes closed. But Avery didn’t leave. The door was right there, and I wasn’t blocking it, or making any kind of stand. Avery stuck it out through the tough times. Clean this shit up, he yelled at me. I stood up from the couch, dropped the video game controller like plunk on the floor. Mom wouldn’t say anything even though I kept looking at her, staring, focusing so hard, because she knew what to do, she had the answers when desperately looked at. I treaded into the kitchen. I bent down to grab some pieces of cupboard, and then Avery’s hands on my shoulders, the clamp of his fingers. He threw me against the fridge. Hard. And at first I didn’t believe he had thrown me that hard. No one threw anyone that hard. Our fridge was one of those old yellow ones, like a rock or a planet. So I slammed into that fridge with my right shoulder, this loud but also very quiet slam. The impact lasted forever. And right as it happened—the shoulder strike moment— I imagined a part of me, this shiny red cloud of essence, passing right through the fridge door and then over the hamburger helper and the almost-empty milk jug, leaking from me, and I imagined the mist on its journey long after Avery’s socks disappeared and he left without closing the door, because there was something behind him throwing me into that fridge in the particular way that he had. I remembered tapping mom on the knee as we both sort sprawled there, not like we couldn’t get up, but like the floor seemed better in those minutes after "The Throwing". Really, we were okay. We whispered about things we would do subsequently. We would not date funny people. We would make something of ourselves. And maybe I was aware of my collar bone not feeling right and being broken. The hospital came later. I didn’t even go back to my school before we moved to Seattle, which was fine because everyone there was stupid, and I would’ve had to explain the sling to them, create some great fabrication about climbing and bridges. And at my new school it was a non-issue, my navy blue sling without any signatures on it, because I didn’t know anyone again.

[ManWithNoName]

First of all, I don't know if this was intentional or not, or if it was due to the formatting of the post, but I would really split it up into paragraphs. Add some line breaks or something. As it stands right now it's really, hard to read cause it's a giant wall of text that the eye kind of slips though it and even though it has periods it feels like a giant run on sentence.

[Grimace]

Actually. I think it's more than the width of the forum box makes it seem strange.


And anyways, there are no paragraph breaks in this segment. It is one continuous recollection, and therefore, though if it were in real time there would be paragraphs, I feel that to be true to the memory it must be unbroken. This makes it a little more stressful to read of course, but allows this building of the scene, this more threatening structure.


Also: forum text formatting doesn't really work. It forces it the margin, so paragraphs would need to be all left aligned with white space between them, which is of course incorrect (white space is to suggest a transition in location or time, or the separation between half scenes etc) and might be even more confusing.

[BellaBianca]

I think you write very well.

Is this your first novel?

I wonder what year it is set to, because YouTube is very young.


Anyway, I understand that this particular structure (sort of stream of consciousness - inspired) is your artistic choice, but I still think it would be beneficial to make paragraphs when you want feedback on the forum.

[Grimace]

Yeah, it's my first attempt at a novel. It's really demoralizing at times.


My main writing experience is with short stories, so the big challenge of a novel is scope, and just having a much broader narrative arc etc.


It is set relatively in the present. Most of it more comedic than this segment.



Anyone with novel writing experience got structure tips? Structure is so crucial. I'm kind of discovering as I move forward just how crucial structure is, and that I can't be afraid to move things around.

[ManWithNoName]

Okay, there are a couple of things I would like to address. First of all for disclosure's sake, I have never had a novel published although I have had a short story published and am currently working on one and have had spent a lot of my time either writing or thinking about writing and I take writing seriously. I write regularly and constantly try to improve.

To begin:

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yeah, it's my first attempt at a novel. It's really demoralizing at times.

I'm going to be honest here, if you read a lot of biographies and books on writing by famous or published authors most of them never have had their first novel published. This is usually cause it's such a mess that to fix it you'd have to piratically rewrite it. I'm not saying this to discourage you I'm saying it to make you understand the reality that it takes about 10,000 hours to get good at anything, in any profession. If you look at any professional sports player it probably took about 10,000 hours of practice to get where they are. If you look at a professional architect or engineer it probably took 10,000 hours between studying in university and on the job experience for them to get where they are. And if you look at any entrepreneur or successful business man it probably took 10,000 hours of hard work and wheeling and dealing for them to get where they are. Writing is no exception, don't become discouraged if you fail, simply learn from your mistakes. Natural talent really only gives you a bit of an inclination towards something. To get good at it takes practice.

When I got serious about writing I wrote a 28,000 word 47 page story. It had a couple of characters, a small story arc and I wrote it primary to get into the habit of writing every day and to see if I could produce something interesting. It was by no means publishable but it was readable and a decent story. Thinking that the only difference between something small in scope like a novella or short story and an actual novel is length I spent the summer writing a 117,000 word 'novel' which to this day remains incomplete and reads pretty much like fan fiction. I say it reads like fan fiction mainly cause it was long and rambling and I felt nervous about what I was doing so I just kept on writing and writing and thought I'll fix it after I'm done. This turned out to a mistake.

After that I wised up a bit and wrote a 50,000 word novella and paid a lot more attention to what I was doing and trying to make it work. I handed it out to people to read, most people only got halfway though and got bored. The people that did finish it said that overall they liked it and that it was good in parts but was slow and I could tell they would not have finished it if I did not know them personally and did not personally ask them to read it. As a result I got a lot of methodical and organized for my current novel and have devoted myself to making it readable.

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Anyone with novel writing experience got structure tips? Structure is so crucial. I'm kind of discovering as I move forward just how crucial structure is, and that I can't be afraid to move things around.

Okay to begin there is no magic structure to a story (although Hollywood seems to think it is the three act structure). Kurt Vonnegut kind of illustrates this in the following video:
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The point of structure is simply to create suspense. Suspense is important cause it's what keeps your readers reading. What is suspense? Suspense is simply the conflict created in the readers mind between what he wants to happen, what he thinks will happen, and what actually happens in your story. You can have the most interesting characters imaginable and the most descriptive and evocative prose but if your story lacks suspense and is predictable then it's will go unread.

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It is one continuous recollection, and therefore, though if it were in real time there would be paragraphs, I feel that to be true to the memory it must be unbroken. This makes it a little more stressful to read of course, but allows this building of the scene, this more threatening structure.

Okay, I'm going to admit that we may differ in opinion here. I'm just going to offer my advice and you can take it or leave it, I really don't care. To begin I ask why are you staying true to the memory? Whose memory? What memory? When writing you are creating the illusion of life. Not actual life. Actual life is incredibly boring, nobody wants to read about actual life. People don't mind reading dramatized life but not actual life. The only thing you should stay true to is communication.

I understand that it is a continuous reflection and I understand that you want to stay true to the memory. However, as it stands your snippet is 798 words with no breaks. Most books are not written with paragraphs or snippets this long and for a very good reason. It's simply really hard to read and readers are inherently lazy. You should not be relying on this 'structure' to create tension. I've read much shorter things with tons of pauses and breaks which were a lot more tense. I feel there are much more effective methods to communicate tension and stress then the ones you have chosen which I feel are hindering the reader.

Like take this scene from No Country For Old Men.

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It's probably one of the most tense scenes in film history. Yet it's slow, has no actual acts of violence and is kind of drawn out. The reason it's so tense is because we know that Anton Chigurh is a crazy sociopath who will kill for no reason. As he talks to the clerk we get the idea that there's something more to the matter at hand and Anton seems to be almost dancing around it in the way he talks. Tension is created cause we begin to think that he's going to kill the clerk but are not actually sure, and then when it comes down to the coin toss we realize that yeah, it could go either way, it really does all come down to this coin toss. In this sense, I don't think that simply writing your snippet in the fashion you have written it (no breaks, stream of consciousness') is the best way to create the effect you want.

All in all, Writing is all about communication. You are trying to commit the story that is in your head on paper in an accessible manner. Whenever you write you should continually ask yourself is this going to create the effect I want. If the reader doesn't understand something and you have to explain it to them or justify your decisions it's because you have failed to communicate what you wanted effectively. Readers cannot read a writers mind, you may have the best story in your head but if you are unable to communicate it, and create the desired effects that you want it doesn't matter.

[Grimace]

Originally Posted by ManWithNoName To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[HIDE="show"]Okay, there are a couple of things I would like to address. First of all for disclosure's sake, I have never had a novel published although I have had a short story published and am currently working on one and have had spent a lot of my time either writing or thinking about writing and I take writing seriously. I write regularly and constantly try to improve. To begin: I'm going to be honest here, if you read a lot of biographies and books on writing by famous or published authors most of them never have had their first novel published. This is usually cause it's such a mess that to fix it you'd have to piratically rewrite it. I'm not saying this to discourage you I'm saying it to make you understand the reality that it takes about 10,000 hours to get good at anything, in any profession. If you look at any professional sports player it probably took about 10,000 hours of practice to get where they are. If you look at a professional architect or engineer it probably took 10,000 hours between studying in university and on the job experience for them to get where they are. And if you look at any entrepreneur or successful business man it probably took 10,000 hours of hard work and wheeling and dealing for them to get where they are. Writing is no exception, don't become discouraged if you fail, simply learn from your mistakes. Natural talent really only gives you a bit of an inclination towards something. To get good at it takes practice. When I got serious about writing I wrote a 28,000 word 47 page story. It had a couple of characters, a small story arc and I wrote it primary to get into the habit of writing every day and to see if I could produce something interesting. It was by no means publishable but it was readable and a decent story. Thinking that the only difference between something small in scope like a novella or short story and an actual novel is length I spent the summer writing a 117,000 word 'novel' which to this day remains incomplete and reads pretty much like fan fiction. I say it reads like fan fiction mainly cause it was long and rambling and I felt nervous about what I was doing so I just kept on writing and writing and thought I'll fix it after I'm done. This turned out to a mistake. After that I wised up a bit and wrote a 50,000 word novella and paid a lot more attention to what I was doing and trying to make it work. I handed it out to people to read, most people only got halfway though and got bored. The people that did finish it said that overall they liked it and that it was good in parts but was slow and I could tell they would not have finished it if I did not know them personally and did not personally ask them to read it. As a result I got a lot of methodical and organized for my current novel and have devoted myself to making it readable. Okay to begin there is no magic structure to a story (although Hollywood seems to think it is the three act structure). Kurt Vonnegut kind of illustrates this in the following video: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. The point of structure is simply to create suspense. Suspense is important cause it's what keeps your readers reading. What is suspense? Suspense is simply the conflict created in the readers mind between what he wants to happen, what he thinks will happen, and what actually happens in your story. You can have the most interesting characters imaginable and the most descriptive and evocative prose but if your story lacks suspense and is predictable then it's will go unread. Okay, I'm going to admit that we may differ in opinion here. I'm just going to offer my advice and you can take it or leave it, I really don't care. To begin I ask why are you staying true to the memory? Whose memory? What memory? When writing you are creating the illusion of life. Not actual life. Actual life is incredibly boring, nobody wants to read about actual life. People don't mind reading dramatized life but not actual life. The only thing you should stay true to is communication. I understand that it is a continuous reflection and I understand that you want to stay true to the memory. However, as it stands your snippet is 798 words with no breaks. Most books are not written with paragraphs or snippets this long and for a very good reason. It's simply really hard to read and readers are inherently lazy. You should not be relying on this 'structure' to create tension. I've read much shorter things with tons of pauses and breaks which were a lot more tense. I feel there are much more effective methods to communicate tension and stress then the ones you have chosen which I feel are hindering the reader. Like take this scene from No Country For Old Men. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. It's probably one of the most tense scenes in film history. Yet it's slow, has no actual acts of violence and is kind of drawn out. The reason it's so tense is because we know that Anton Chigurh is a crazy sociopath who will kill for no reason. As he talks to the clerk we get the idea that there's something more to the matter at hand and Anton seems to be almost dancing around it in the way he talks. Tension is created cause we begin to think that he's going to kill the clerk but are not actually sure, and then when it comes down to the coin toss we realize that yeah, it could go either way, it really does all come down to this coin toss. In this sense, I don't think that simply writing your snippet in the fashion you have written it (no breaks, stream of consciousness') is the best way to create the effect you want. All in all, Writing is all about communication. You are trying to commit the story that is in your head on paper in an accessible manner. Whenever you write you should continually ask yourself is this going to create the effect I want. If the reader doesn't understand something and you have to explain it to them or justify your decisions it's because you have failed to communicate what you wanted effectively. Readers cannot read a writers mind, you may have the best story in your head but if you are unable to communicate it, and create the desired effects that you want it doesn't matter.[/HIDE]

Interesting read.

A couple things.

Many books have sentences longer than this snippet, a la Saramago, a la Foster Wallace, so I disagree that there is a fundamental problem with the length. But I don't really want to argue about the snippet; it's a snippet.

Obviously I mean the character's memory. Seeing as he is the narrator, and I'm not doing anything overly meta-fictive with this novel (yet, muahahaha)

I'm very aware of how authors struggle publishing their first novel; however, I still have every intention of getting this novel published. This snippet is just something I posted for people to read and hopefully enjoy. That said, someone short listed for the Giller Prize said the novel (the 20000 words they read) was eminently publishable, and that he would pay "full and not amazon price for it," whatever that's worth (possibly not much, though certainly more than the Amazon price). I'd believe in my work regardless of such ego coddling, but still, ever onward.


The long explanation of basic writing theory was kind of unnecessary (I have a degree in creative writing), but kudos for taking the time to put it all down. You clearly have a deep interest in prose and that is something to be admired.


And finally, in defense of "The Reader," yes, some readers are lazy, but I have high expectations of my reader, as do many authors, as dictates my style, and as is demanded by my aesthetic. The notion that someone would be too lazy to read an eight hundred word paragraph baffles me, but oh well, different strokes and so on.


I also don't think any scene with Anton Chigurh in it needs the tension to be explained. He is one of the most obvious tension creating fictional villains I've ever encountered in literature or film (where is he brilliantly portrayed, I'll add).


My structure question was a poor one. I meant that if someone could give specific structure problems they'd encountered in writing their novel and how they overcame them, I could certainly extrapolate, if not pure maxims, then at least some usable knowledge as it might pertain my own work. I think you'd be surprised how many established forms of narrative structure there are.

Novellas are quite interesting, and certainly an under-represented prose form; I'm glad someone is writing them and keeping them in circulation.





Finally, George Saunders is brilliant.


Ps. I never get to discuss writing with anyone in my home town, so I appreciate some engagement, even if it's through the internet.

[XFire35]

I got bored before 'great at mean'. It seems too verbose and too chatty. Furthermore, your punctuation feels 'odd', I think it would help 'flow' if, especially in the first few sentences, merged them into one (too many fullstops - hinders reading and it makes me mentally sleepy):

Only one of her boyfriends had also been a comic. He was really funny, amazingly funny. He was funnier than her, by far, and I’d seen his videos on Youtube, and they were great. Forty thousand views type of great. His name was Avery Aberdeen. A comedian’s name.

Only one of her boyfriends was a comic; he was really funny, even funnier than her judging by what I'd seen of his Youtube videos, and they were great. His name was Avery Aberdeen: a comedian's name.

[Rohsiph]

I'm a wannabe author at the agent-query stage with my first 65,000-word MS. I believe in my MS, though have yet to receive any requests for partials. It's possible my first novel will fail as is so common, but I've sort of been betting the farm on it so . . . while there's still a little hope left I gotta hold on.

Ahem.

Grimace: your responses have sounded dangerously defensive. You may have a degree in creative writing--but you're making it look like you're one of the ones who never took anyone's criticisms to heart because you knew the right way to do everything. Maybe not; could just be the nature of the forum, looking at this thread after 4am, my own fears manifesting in strange forms. But that's the impression I'm left with.

It's not a good one. Your snippet would be greatly improved by a few more paragraph breaks. Separate each independent thought. As is, it works right now--but package it in a more readable mode and now you have three outside opinions agreeing it'll work better. As a CW degree holder you should know to play with all criticisms--but especially the ones that keep popping up over and over again. Try it out; if it doesn't work out, thank us for our opinions and keep the defensive language to yourself.

The "raccoon cape" wasn't in the original Super Mario Bros. Minor detail, but people who know will be instantly turned off--add the 3, or change to Super Mario World. If your editor tells you to change it later, trust him/her--but for now if you're going to make a reference like that make sure it's accurate.

I went to a writing conference two years ago and one of the most unexpected lessons I took from the experience was seeing how, from what I grasped, a good majority of modern authors write without first figuring out the whole scope of their novels. I don't start putting the pen to paper until I feel confident I've grasped the full concept of an interesting story: main characters, the full range of the plot, the entire lay of the land. I don't write blind. I'll leave holes in the outline to fill in as I go along, but I write working towards a definite end.

90,000 words in is waaay too late to work with an outline if you didn't make one earlier. If you did then look to that when toying with structure. Some writers don't need to do a lot of work in the planning stage, but I found it really helped with my first full-length MS.

Also note: the 'sweet spot' for publication right now is 70-100k words for adult fiction. SFF can go a bit longer. This sounds 'literary'--if that's right expect a pretty limited run for the first edition. Honesty is the can't-live-with-him, can't-live-without-him frenemy of all artists: accept the reality of the modern publishing world and you'll be much better off.

Final note: look for more research about the industry itself off the Internet, and always second-guess the reputibility of what you find. There's a lot of bad advice out there--maybe even some of mine. Stay sharp and bear with it--my own research suggests it won't get any easier from here.

[Grimace]

I would never have noticed that Mario inaccuracy tbh. Good stuff.


I certainly took brutally critical feedback for five years, and had to take it to heart or I would never have learned anything. Obviously over time you develop the ability to pick what will actually be helpful, seeing as you are constantly getting feedback from a huge array of different people with different styles.

How many "average" paper sized published pages is 100k words, Roh? I haven't been able to figure out the proper ratio between a word document and book sized document. I am aware of word ranges and the desire that manuscripts fit these, so it's surely a consideration.

I think the degree to which you use an outline changes from person to person. I was talking to Bill Gaston and he said he'd tried the 100% outline before starting, the No outline, and then the 50 page ahead outline. He felt that the zero outline might mess with your ability to move forward at times, but allowed for moments of pure invention or surprising changes in the narrative that could possibly work really well. The 100% outline reduced his stress a lot, but he said it may have limited the narrative's ability to change around problems instead of just forcing them through the outline's cheese cloth. He'd settled, he said, later in his career on the partial outline. They do all have drawbacks and benefits, I think.


I used an outline in very general terms, though I never wrote it down (stored it in the ol' head vault). I know how the novel ends roughly, and just need to write the final sub-arc and obviously then begin drafting, which is a different and possibly very long process.


I like writing comedy with a dramatic core, though lots of my short fiction is more minimalist.


What kind of stuff are you guys working on?


The novel's short synopsis is the character witnesses a little girl drowning when he's a child, and doesn't say anything to anyone for reasons that would take too long to explain. He develops an obsession with this girls family as he grows, and kind of stalks them using the internet and various other means, with the intention of confronting them and admitting what he did. He has a new angle on self harming in that he finds any means possible to water board himself and simulate drowning through his later childhood and adolescence. He hitchhikes across Canada and heads to Boston after tracking the current residence of this family. And the final arc will concern the way he's goes about this confrontation, most centered on the father of this girl.


I'm really curious what you guys are writing about (even though about is a bad word for anything interesting)? Even if in general terms.

[Rohsiph]

Fun, weird, whatever: I love this change in tone. I've seen myself do it quite a few times. Neat
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Another possible fix for the Mario line: change raccoon-suit to something about the invincibility stars. Those were in the original.

My research suggests page-count used to be a static thing back in the type-writer days--monospaced fonts meant, on average, you'd get ~250 words per page (double-spaced), rarely dipping below 200 or over 300. I recently read a blog post by a freelance copyeditor urging all writers to print their manuscripts in Courier New because it's a monospaced font and the publishers who hand out that sort of work are still abiding the outdated type-writer system, meaning she often gets manuscripts in Times New Roman or Arial that appear as significantly less pages as they ought to--yet she's getting paid per page.

My MS in Courier New is 333 pages double-spaced right now. The same exact story is 259 pages in Times New Roman. It really depends on the font--and tech-savvy agents / editors aren't making the distinctions they ought to, but I think the 250-word-average per page has been the standard for some time now. Determining actual-publication page count isn't possible until you've actually got a publisher making it happen.

I find crafting an outline to be a very important step, but agree it appears to be different for everyone. For me, that's the point where I test whether the idea I've been building--so far never for less than a year--actually holds up, actually makes sense from beginning to end, actually has interesting characters and events. It may limit me, but so far I've made a point of leaving at least a few pieces 'blank' to stretch / possibly change things.

My short work tends toward psychological horror, though my novel isn't really intense enough to fit that genre. It's more of an adventure. A young woman wakes up in a brutal afterlife where she's told her only hope of finding peace requires climbing to the peak of an unfathomably large mountain. (It took me more than a little work to boil it down to one sentence--glad I'm at the end of that step.)

I'm just beginning the outlining stage of my second novel. Another adventure, though this time set on modern / near-future Earth. Decidedly more sci-fi than paranormal or whatever you might call my first shot. There will be robots with a hive-mind consciousness and a power-hungry mercenary who takes over the world.

[Grimace]

And the invincibility stars could also be like "oh, I have invincibility stars, this domestic abuse can't actually hurt me." Or it at least is more thematically linked, lol!


Yeah the "1 sentence" thing I've definitely been trying to do myself. So many people have told me that in pitches to publishers you really need to be able to describe your work as succinctly as possible, because you're probably going to have to repeat it like 500 times.

I like that mountain idea. Is the story kind of a fable, or some kind of neo-fable?

I feel going to school for writing has a deficiency that everyone is strongly encouraged to write realism, and any type of deviation from that is sort of taboo, or not to be done lightly. On the one hand the schools need more limited criteria so they can try to give something approaching a "fair" marking scheme, but it certainly limits the creative scope people can approach their writing with. Obviously I wanted my grades (ha!) but I think I'll probably end doing much more strange shit in my writing subsequent to grad school (I'll be in an even MORE realist style bastion), but I really want to teach writing and find a way to support myself through writing without solely relying on selling books (sort of unrealistic).

A short story I've just finished drafting is modeled after this relationship between two neighbors in rural Yukon (where I live), one of whom does Equine Therapy with disabled people, the other who is kind of a wannabe woodsman. The lady who owns the horses is unable to euthanize her horses when they get sick or old, and so she always calls the neighbor to do it for her, and the story kind of tracks through a period of years every horse she asks him to kill, and their own personal lives as their families grow and change. It's told from both perspectives, and I'm having some problems with this, but pushing forward anyway.

This story is essentially non-fiction because that is really the relationship my father had (and still has) with our neighbor, and I didn't even know about it until he told me how he'd taken a dead horse on a sled across a frozen lake that day with his brother, and once at the other side they'd cut this horse into pieces with machetes to bait traps for wolves. My dad isn't a wannabe woodsman, he's the real deal, but I didn't want to make the story characters exactly the same. I just remember when he told me that, I was like "WTF? BEST STORY IDEA EVER!!! Why have you been holding out on me??!!" Of course then I interrogated him about all the details. I think he was annoyed.


I find the Yukon has so much northern Gothic story material (a joke on Raymond Carver's southern Gothic, or Flannery O'Connor's.) I base so many of my short stories on real events these days, and yet I don't like writing non-fiction. Weird, I guess.

[Rohsiph]

I really, really wanted to get into an MFA Fiction program. Tried twice, received 100% form-letter rejections. Not a single waiting list spot. The desire is still there, but I'm swiftly approaching a point in my life where I need to find a pragmatic solution to my financial situation--it's looking more and more like I'll never get a creative graduate degree.

I have little interest in realism. Haruki Murakami's flavor of "magical" realism pushes my buttons, but I feel like there's more to learn about reality in reality than in fiction. I want fiction to feed my imagination.

Not to say realism doesn't have its place--but I lament its immobile position as the pinnacle of literature in the academic system. If I had made it into an MFA program I'd be working on the same projects I'm now focused on. Apparently they don't want me. Hopefully some commercial publishers will.

The mountain idea has some fable/parable aspects to it--there's more going on than meets the eye. In the long run I have two more novel concepts that'll flesh out the rest of the world. The final piece will sum up the core of a philosophy I've been building for some time. This first piece lays the foundations.

A little anecdote that's been on my mind that kinda-sorta applies to some of this: near the end of my undergrad experience one of my philosophy instructors shared his view of the modern philosophy 'scene.' Basically he said 95% of modern philosophers are criticizing what only the remaining 5% have the capacity to come up with. I've wondered if the implication might apply to more than just the single discipline. How many creative people are really coming up with anything "new?" Back when I was putting together my MFA apps I'd peruse some critique forums and I couldn't believe how much of the material bored me--and, worse, how many of those strictly realistic pieces were apparently the kind of thing that was winning people entry into prestigious programs.

So . . . I have some jealousy issues with realism and MFA students now. The odds as they've stacked higher and higher against me seem to suggest there's a strong possibility I'm not half the writer I've been tricked into believing I might be. On the other hand . . . as I'm waiting for query responses I'm working through my third word-by-word precision revision and I still feel like the story I've crafted has a lot going for it. Time will tell--less and less as the days roll by.

[Grimace]

Having spent a year out of university (in rural Yukon, no less) I was pretty keen to get back into the dusty hallways of some school somewhere.

I'm in Canada, so I applied at University of Victoria and University of British Columbia for their MFA. Uvic it turned out had no fiction adviser available for 2011 so they couldn't accept me (I did my undergrad there, great writing program, amazing professors), but I got into UBC. I think my goal is to not let my writing become too manipulated by the style that is going to be pushed there. I mean, I actually enjoy realism when it's well done, but there is certainly the criticism (an accurate one, I think) that writing programs simply churn out people with very nice craft and polish, but no imagination or soul. I kind of had the opposite problem. My craft was terrible, but my super dominant N gave me good ideas (I'd like to think, lol) I don't think I knew how to use commas until I was twenty one. But after getting a comment like "This is an A level story, but your terrible grammar and formatting mean I must give you a C minus" I had to buckle down and figure my shit out if I wanted to be serious.

My goal at university was to get as little formal education as possible, write zero essays, and do as few multiple choice tests as I could. A writing program supplied most of these, and of course I loved writing. I don't think I've ever met anyone as poor at writing essays as me. I just don't "get" it, on any level.

I have some Murakami on my shelf that I need to read. Do you have favorites stories you'd recommend of his?

I absolutely love Sherman Alexie. He's from Washington state. The guy is seriously funny and just great. The guy writes so much, and so much of it is good. I swear he's written like 20 books of poetry, 10 collections/novels, play, screenplays. Just insane. His collection "Ten Little Indians" is brilliant.


The whole writing program thing is much larger in the USA (not sure if that's where you're from) than in Canada. Canada only has 7-8, I think, programs for an undergrad in writing, and only in at Uvic and UBC (and maybe 1 or 2 others) are the programs free from the umbrella of the English Department. We have even fewer MFA's. Whereas the USA seems to have like 50+ writing programs, with whole tiers of quality and prestige and a similar situation of the "iveys" like Columbia and the legendary Iowa workshop etc and then of course the lower "quality" programs etc. It all seemed rather daunting to me. I was thinking about applying to some. But short of a full scholarship, I would have never been able to afford it. My MFA at UBC will only be 4300$/year for tuition, which is awesome, and slightly less then the
40 000$/year at Columbia, haha.

At Uvic, the writing department was started by this Warlock/poet (not charlie sheen), and I can't remember his name. He was apparently so infuriating to the English department that they were willing to do anything to get him out of their building, so they gave him his own department for creative writing. I've always kind of liked that genesis story.

That philosophy anecdote is great. And I'd venture that that equation could be applied to many other forms of writing and art.


What kind of applicant/acceptance ratios are there in the US school? (again, I'm not sure you're from there, if not, my mistake). I think mine was something like 30/170 applications. Which really isn't bad at all. I can imagine some schools in the USA must get thousands.

[Rohsiph]

Yes, I'm in the US. Interesting hearing about Canadian options--I'd never thought about looking into any 'foreign' programs except once teasing the idea of applying to a UK school. The landscape here is brutal if you're not willing to shell out $8k+/year for tuition--and I only applied to schools that offered at least 80% of their students full assistanceships/fellowships. There are a few dozen, but their acceptance ratios are ridiculous--I think U Texas' Michener Writing Center accepts 20 students between fiction, poetry, play, and screenwriting out of at least a thousand applicants a year.

It's a shame that's how it is because it really makes it feel like a lottery--knowing there are bound to be many applicants with incredible skill and talent that are getting passed up for any number of reasons. I wish I could think of a better system, but writing is necessarily subjective--if a great school ends up with a sub-par review committee one year you can bet a lot of great writers are going to lose out.

I studied English & Philosophy as a dual major with the goal of taking as many classes that could help to improve my writing as possible, yet also trying to make sure many of those classes offered something else to learn in addition to sharpening my creative abilities. The disciplines I chose proved a very nice fit.

My favorite by Murakami is Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore are both excellent and a bit more popular. Norwegian Wood is his most 'famous' work--it's good but lacks the wilder surreality in the other titles I've mentioned. I'm still working through his short story volumes, but his collection After the Quake would probably be a good introduction if you're more interested in shorter work. After Dark might fit that bill as a good novella that shows a little of everything he does well.

Usually I'm not so knowledgable about authors, but last year while working night-shifts I decided I'd try reading a more contemporary writer's full oeuvre. Mostly I've been sticking to the 'classics'--including more than a little realism, actually . . . my beef is more with contemporary realism than that which has already stood the test of time I guess.

I mean, I actually enjoy realism when it's well done, but there is certainly the criticism (an accurate one, I think) that writing programs simply churn out people with very nice craft and polish, but no imagination or soul. I kind of had the opposite problem. My craft was terrible, but my super dominant N gave me good ideas (I'd like to think, lol) I don't think I knew how to use commas until I was twenty one. But after getting a comment like "This is an A level story, but your terrible grammar and formatting mean I must give you a C minus" I had to buckle down and figure my shit out if I wanted to be serious.

My best friend has had a similar problem. In the end he has gravitated more toward music than writing, but his good ideas in stories were often marred by poor execution.

I felt like learning how to write academic papers helped me hone the nuts-and-bolts of writing pretty well. In fact, my fiction-outlining system isn't much different from my essay argument-building system. The little I've read by Anthony Burgess makes me wonder if he went about his craft in a similar way--both times I've tried his work I've gotten a strong sense that he worked out the 'skeleton' of the story long before he put the rest together.

[ManWithNoName]

Okay, I seem to be a bit behind here so I'm going to try and catch up. I'm guess I'll start with the whole outline thing in response to this:

	I think the degree to which you use an outline changes from person to person.

As far as outlining goes when I first start writing I tend to have a good idea of the characters, their motivations, and the general story arc. I first begin by dividing my story up into chapters. I have found this to be extremely helpful to ensure that I don't end up writing to much or writing boring or necessary transition stuff for the sake of it.

My structure is kind of basic, each chapter generally has 1 'main event' or development and only one and the chapter generally is all about the implications of it. Each chapter introduces the development, has the character or characters react to the change and then ends before the consequences of the reaction are totally clear. The next chapter then picks up where the previous one left off. It concludes the previous development of the previous chapter and then in cause and effect like fashion introduces a new development that will be the focus of the chapter which is an effect of the last one. The characters then react again to this new development and the pattern continues.

Once I have a basic outline I begin to write the chapters. I generally have a good idea of the main developments in the overall story arc so it's a bit like connecting the dots or filling in the blanks. I have a good idea of what is going to happen and where things are going, a lot of writing I find is simply just getting the details of exactly how it comes about right. Every once and a while though I have to stop to really examine my plot and rewrite my outline cause if I don't think something is working I'll try something else and won't stick to it. I guess in this sense I probably outline about 50 pages ahead.

I'm actually in an engineering program and have no formal education in creative writing. I'm kind of all self taught and spend a lot of time either writing or thinking about writing or examining writing to try and find out what makes it work. In a sense I take almost an engineers approach to writing where I treat it like a craft. You try different methods and things, some of them work, some of them don't but you keep on refining and testing until you get something that on the whole does work. Like if your building a new type of engine or designing a bridge, you don't get offended if you test it and it doesn't work. You simply go back to the drawing board and think up something new or fix the problems that arise. I treat the writing process in a similar manner.

I attend a writers circle though and hang out with Lit majors who also like to write creatively and in the near future am probably going to become an editor/overseer for the university's literary magazine as they are short staffed and have asked for my help. If any of your guys' schools have writers circles I encourage you greatly to attend them. I have learned so much just by reading other amateurs work and getting to see how their creative process works, which is something I find professional authors tend to hide. This is also why I tend to watch a lot of films and study films and what went into making them. Unlike books it's almost impossible for directors to hide their creative process because of the amount of other people involved. I think I have learned more about how to craft a good story from reading the trials and tribulations of directors and how they solved problems that they were faced with than from reading about authors.

You also learn a lot at a writers circle if you attend regularly. Usually each session we get at least one amateur writer who leaves it after never to come back because he did not like the criticism. I've pretty much seen it all at this point. I've seen shitty writing that was shitty, shitty writing that could be good if the person worked on it, good writing that was good but didn't really go anywhere and was boring to read, experimental writing that made no sense, experimental writing that was good but near impossible to sell etc. I find that by seeing so much amateur writing and works in progress that I've been able to develop a greater sense of what works, and what doesn't. That and how egotistical people can get about their writing. We've had some real crazies attend our writers circle.

	I'm really curious what you guys are writing about (even though about is a bad word for anything interesting)? Even if in general terms.

The story I'm working on is a historical fiction/fantasy story. I originally wanted to do it in one book but due to the scope of it I've had to break it up into parts and make each part a different book. I really, really did not want to do this at first. Mostly because I have no intention of becoming one of those fantasy authors who writes trilogies all the time and has like 15 books in the same world and whose work is just kind of escapism. I have a bunch of different ideas for stories in a bunch of different genre's/classifications with varying degree's of realism and experimentation involved. To be completely honest the main reason I choose to do a fantasy story is simply because I think it would be one of the easiest types to get published as an new author.

I call it part historical fiction cause it's set in 1824ish Germany and I've done a lot of research to become familiar with the history and setting. It has certain elements of fantasy so it is also very much a work of fantasy.

	I feel going to school for writing has a deficiency that everyone is strongly encouraged to write realism, and any type of deviation from that is sort of taboo, or not to be done lightly.

Funny you should bring this up. Even though I consider it a work of fantasy I consider it different from about 99% of fantasy out there cause I am treating the elements of fantasy in a very realistic manner. I try to write real people, behaving in a realistic manner to fantastic situations. I find the literary world seems to be very divided between 'genre' and 'realism' and each camp seems to dislike the other one. I find it all kind of stupid. To me there are only two things you ever have to ask of art. Is it genuine? and is it powerful? If it is both these things, both original and emotionally moving and thought provoking, then it it good. It doesn't matter if it has cowboys or dragons or anything else like this which if something has it's automatically deemed 'genre'.

In this sense I like to think I'm a bit between these two camps and can successfully produce a work that is a bit of a merger between the two. If I'm successful or not remains to be seen but it's kind of the goal I set when writing.

To this end the concept of my story is that it's about this girl in a small Town in 1824 Germany who finds a magic door in the woods, a magic door that leads to another world. I know this concept is not really new, and I know it sounds exceedingly simple but just take a second and really think about this. If you found a magic door in the woods that you knew led to another world would you go though it? Stop and really think about it. What if you didn't know exactly where it led? What if there was the possibility that you could never come back? Would you tell people about it or keep it to yourself? If you were going to go though it would you bring people along? Would you feel that because you found it that you are supposed to or destined to go though? And if you are unsure if you would go though it or not under what circumstances would you go though it?

I choose the magic door premise because I find it's an deceptively simple thing with a bunch of exceedingly complex questions surrounding the actual implications of it if it actually existed. From these questions arise certain themes and philosophies, certain problems, uncertainties, and conflicts which I think (well am hoping and kind of betting on will differentiate my book) will make a story that is worth reading and that is examining of the human condition more so then the escapist fantasy which saturates the market.

The actual plot is a little more complex and involved than the premise however. Germany in 1824 was not unified and basically a collection of over 100 city states, kingdoms, duchies, and pretty much everything else imaginable. Plus Napoleon was still around at the time, and although he had been defeated, Germany was still kind of reeling from the turmoil he caused less then 10 years ago and so even though the Town is a small peaceful town when the story takes place there is a real feeling that the peace is kind of temporary and that sometimes you just have to kind of keep your head down and focus on developing a somewhat sequestered sustainable life rather than dreaming big. The girl who is my main character grows up with this as the greater setting and so the story is very much a Bildungsroman, a coming of age story as she deals with and meets with elements of fantasy in the woods and so has a hard time accepting the harshness of reality and the fact that like in all coming of ages stories that she must grow up. I don't want to get into the specifics of the plot besides to say that it takes place all in a single year and involves her and certain characters in the Town that are harboring dark secrets that she learns of and begins to investigate and become entangled in which provides much of the impetus and suspense for the story which eventually culminate with her going though the magical door she found in the woods. The second book then deals with her exploring the magical world behind the door and learning what exactly is going on and her Father and a few other people's attempts to go in after her and get her back. I guess in a sense my story is not so much a story of fantasy and escapism as much as it is about fantasy and escapism, as escapism is kind of the main theme and issue that I explore.

[Grimace]

Actually the magic door premise, despite being familiar, has incredible potential all the the same. The traveling through a different is essentially a mythological archetype, and as such, will continue to interest people, perhaps forever. I was reading a really interesting essay about mythology, and the thesis was that mythology is just as much a science as Science. It was in book of essays by Robert Bringhurst. Good stuff. Historical fiction always has interested me, but I feel I wouldn't have the energy to do adequate research, which is crucial to making it work (even if you are incorporating surreal elements.)

I like the locale, though I don't anything about German history. It seems to be an area you have an interest in and that will show in the writing, I'm sure.

[Rohsiph]

My first short story for my fiction writing class played with the magic-door idea, except it was in a dream. At first I wanted to make it a 'real' magic door despite being in a dream and toy with the implications: a young girl walks through and the next morning her parents can't find her. A week later after a police investigation there are still no leads--none of her friends know, there's no evidence of foul play. At the same time, of course, she's exploring a new world, where she's been recruited because her imagination was powerful enough to allow the dream-door device to work.

I dialed back the implications and made the dream into a dream about the girl working through a period of extreme change: finishing high school, moving away from home, preparing for college, potentially losing touch with all her friends. In retrospect I don't think it worked out all that well . . . making the door just a fantasy robbed the concept of its urgency. It was my "realism" piece the first time I applied to MFA programs, attached to a sci-fi psychological horror adaptation/'rewrite' of the Japanese movie Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

Every now and then I think about trying the original idea again . . . but so far it's way down my list. There are a half-dozen other stories I'm much more excited to tell.

All that said, I like the archetype. 19th century Germany is an interesting twist.

[ManWithNoName]

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Actually the magic door premise, despite being familiar, has incredible potential all the the same. The traveling through a different is essentially a mythological archetype, and as such, will continue to interest people, perhaps forever. I was reading a really interesting essay about mythology, and the thesis was that mythology is just as much a science as Science.

Yeah even though fantasy is filled with mythological elements and icons and different things, I find authors now a days use them to much as a means to an end instead of exploring the means.

Like take the common fantasy dragon. Most fantasy authors use it as simply a monster for their hero's to kill, like some kind of final boss. However in original Norse mythology and folklore the Dragon was not just a horrible beast. It has a much deeper and complex meaning. It resided on a pile of gold deep within the earth. Now gold and wealth in Scandinavian society was not seen as something that was necessarily good. They used to have a saying that gold was best when it was given. The reason was that to secure the loyalty of his Thanes a Scandinavian lord or king would give away most of his gold earned in plunder to them. This was seen as a very noble thing to do. So in this sense they saw the dragon which resided upon a pile of gold as the ultimate expression of greed and sloth. The dragon would also grow in size proportionally to it's hoard and when the dragon was killed if the hoard was not given away and the gold distributed to lessen it's 'curse' the gold could actually kind of taint a person with the greed of the dragon and drive them mad. Also because the dragon was hidden in the earth and anything that lived underneath the earth was kind of seen as hidden and mysterious the dragon was said to contain secret wisdom and that whomever killed it would be privy to this wisdom and become a bit supernatural. The wisdom being the secret of the hoard: that giving away gold to secure friendship is worth far more than the gold itself. There are a couple more important things about the significance of the dragon but I can't remember them know off the top of my head.

I find that in not taking time to learn about the significance and context of element they are pulling from a mythology or culture (or if they want to make an element or symbol in their own writing mythological), authors tend to miss it's depth and why it created in the first place. You have to understand the worldview it existed in before you can present it or all you end up doing is taking a modern generic story and just basically switch the costumes and settings. So a story of a cop with a gun fighting criminals to protect the city becomes a story of knight with a sword slaying a dragon to protect a village. I find Hollywood to be the worst for this (mostly cause scripts now a days are written way to fast) and even though they appear different all their movies are getting really repetitive and feel really the same.

Ever since I read Man And His Symbols by Carl Jung it really changed how I thought about mythology. (I'm going to look up that author and essays you mentioned he sounds good). Carl Jung basically postulated that all the different archetypes or repeating characters or elements in art are just aspects of our psyche or philosophy manifested concretely to make them understandable. I've always been interested in creating mythology and working with it and like the dragon example above make sure I really research it when I deal with it. However when I say mythology I don't mean world building. I find a lot of authors and readers tend to think they are the same. Like J.R.R Tolkien did not really create a mythology as much as he created a world with a history.

To me mythology and mythological stories is more akin to religious or numinous experience. They attempt to explain profound insights and feelings that are very hard to put into words because they are experienced more than explained and ultimately always have a sense of the greater unknown. In this regard I also really like to write horror because good horror is all about giving a sense of the unknown and true religious or numinous experiences are as terrifying as they are wonderful.

Although I do research things and tend to be pretty thorough and meticulous about it and have read a couple books now and numerous websites on topics relating to what I am writing about, I really just kind of learn enough so that I feel I can fool a general audience. I'm a storyteller not a scholar. I'm pretty sure an actual historian who knows the time period would probably rip my book apart regarding some minor details and maybe one or two major ones. In this sense though, I don't care, I try to create the illusion of reality, not actual reality. It has been a bit of an exhausting experience though as I'll preform research as I go along so at times writing feels like a bit of a juggling act.

[Grimace]

a few other things about the novel, pertaining to the snippet. I like writing through process decisions. I find it geekily interesting.

With a very close first person narrator, such as the one my novel has, you run certain risks. The perspective can begin to feel like a box, or some kind trap from which you can's escape (as the reader) These were some of the critiques of the first three chapters on the novel, and some of those concerns are implied by the some of the criticism by forum members.

My professors suggestion was to change into a very close third person (simple past) so that I could maintain the free-indirect-discourse with my narrator, John, and yet lessen the cloistering effect that the first person had in segments like this one. But I couldn't do that third person switch (I re wrote entire chapters with different pronouns; it was a very painful process) both because I really liked how the voice sounded in first, and third just couldn't the same humour I was trying to play with.

My solution was to modulate this intense closeness. Subsequent to this chapter, the voice moves further back, not incredibly far, but it gives some space and dwells outside of his head for longer periods of time. I found the modulation works best to mimic his troubled mental states. When he's a particularly manic mood, these long deconstructed thought paragraphs (like the one up top) can occur, but as he get's closer to his goal on confronting the family, this voice mellows, as he slowly understands that something in his life, once the obsession is ended (for better or worse) will have to change. I try to keep all his pathology as understated as possible. If he doesn't feel comfortable about something he simply won't mention it all, and so his personality in some ways exists within the negative spaces between the details he chooses to elucidate for the reader.

So here's a little scene from later on. I'm not sure if this exactly does what I mentioned. But it get's him at least interacting with real people. Drinking, too. Which is very strange for him at the time. Cadwell is his best friend. Most of this doesn't really pertain to anything other than a scene that i thought had good dialogue potential. Also he has an intense phobia of water and marine animals.



"
The shore rocks were round and shiny, like the bald heads of some strange forgotten coastal people, buried to their skulls in endless rows. It was almost dark. I had a beer in my hand, and it chilled my whole arm with its cold. Not chilled like chilled, but like I imagined, in a different time, it should be chilling me. I looked at the people around the fire, behind me. Natasha was sitting between Cad’s legs, her back against his chest. I wanted that. There were others. Ingrid wrapped around some soccer player. Stupid couples. Jumping in place dawned on me, but I resisted. The sun had dipped under the ocean, or into it, gone for a swim— Silly fucking ocean, it said.
A girl stood near me, also staring at the water, maybe also enacting some drama with the sun and the dark ocean. Had she just now gotten next to me? Or before? She had short brown hair, kind of twisted everywhere in a new cool style. “Hey,” I said.
“Hi.”
“What’re you up to these days.”
“These days?” She looked at me. Her pants only went to her shins. They were called something, this type of pant. I couldn’t remember. I liked them.
“I’m Jon.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“You go to Ballard.”
I nodded and leaned closer to her face. “Are you a stalker?”
“I’m Alexis.” This came out slightly slurred. Good. Drunk people put up with more.
“Alexis, we are schoolmates.” I’d used to British accent again. Oh God. It wasn’t ready.
“That’s funny.”
I offered her the beer. “Want some?”
She snatched the cold can from me. Drank from it. Kept it at her side. “You know what?” she said, looking at me then turning back to the water.
“What?”
“I saw you do something so weird once.” She showed her perfect white teeth.
“What?” My side thrummed.
“I saw you at the playground. Salmon Bay Park. You know? With the big orange slide?”
“Yeah. Yes, I know.”
“You swung the tether ball around the pole. And you put your arms down and let it hit you in the face.”
Oh no. She’d seen. “Are you sure it was me?”
“It was you. Wasn’t it.”
“I must’ve missed it. I don’t think that’s right.”
“That thing swung right around. You know, the orange ball. And it’s heavy. That ball is heavy. Heavy as…shit.” She seemed satisfied with that.
“I’m going on a trip soon.”
“Where?”
“Boston.”
“What’s in Boston?”
“It’s a secret.”
“You’re weird, you know.” She sidestepped until her hip bone touched my thigh. I put my arm around her shoulders. This was nice.
“I know.”
“Why don’t you just be normal?” She kissed my neck.
“I could be normal.”
Her lips again against the skin of my neck. She’d turned into me. I had my arms all around her now, standing there on the shore. At least her thin frame stood between me and the water. I couldn’t fall in without her under me. Then we could both drown, if it came to that. Both get pulled to the mud. She looked up at me, her eyes these dark things. I leaned down, she leaned up. We kissed. She had this rough, rough tongue, and it wanted to be everywhere. Everything felt huge in mouths. My hands were doing these circles on her lower back, then her bum, round and…dense. Alexis. This went on. I loved it. This.
I heard this woooosh. A sizzle, hissing, hissing. Someone yelled “Firefighters!”
“Jon.” It was Cadwell.
Alexis and I were all of a sudden not one anymore—we’d sort of flung ourselves away from each other.
“What?” I snapped
“Firefighters. We have to go. No fires allowed.”
Alexis stood to the side of us, her eyes on me, her shoulders cricked to the side. Dark enough that she seemed made of wax. A thin waxen spear. Waxen. Men in rubber suits were shovelling dirt over the bonfire. The hissing had stopped. The dirt wasn’t necessary. But fires had never been about necessary. “Where’s Natasha?” I asked. Everything darkness.
“In a cab. Let’s go.” Cadwell looked wild.
“My place?”
“Yeah.”
I looked back at Alexis. Cadwell had been there for seventeen seconds. She was gone.
“Let’s run,” I said.
“Yeah.”
We ran down the shore past the firefighters. Our shoes slapped the rocks. My shoes would shatter on the rocks, or the rocks would shatter. Something had to shatter—this was obvious. I veered up a gravel trail to the street. It was steep and loose rocks scattered behind the impact of my shoes. But we ran. My legs churned that dirt, beat that dirt into a fine meringue. The balls of my feet were granite, they were indestructible. They hurt but were indestructible. We ran and ran. Cold and hot and sweat; we got down 54th and past the bars, then some houses. I knew the way. We stopped a few blocks from my house. Cadwell put his hands on his knees and puked silently over the pavement. “You okay?” I said. We gasped in our own tired worlds for a moment.
“Good run.” He wiped his mouth with his sweater sleeve.
“We’re pretty close.”
“Who was she?”
“She had the shortest hair.”
“Who was she, though?”
“Alexis.”
“From school?”
“That one.” My lungs wanted to inflate faster and more often than they were able to. We walked slower than should have been possible, trying to balance the run, balance all that fury. Vibration ran outward from my forehead, down into my nose, my mouth, my collar bone. “God,” I said, between breaths.
“Fuck him,” said Cad. “He could never run like that.”
“He’d be stuck with the firefighters.”
“Trying to explain everything, right?” He laughed and choked slightly and then spit. He was a puker.
“Let’s go.”
And we ran again."

[rwm4768]

As a fellow aspiring writer, I can identify with the many struggles we go through. I have written four novels and have edited one of them to no end. I still have not found the courage to start querying agents. I've had some online query critiques, and they have been helpful.

I think you have an interesting writing style. It's not one I particularly care for, but I know some people do. To me, it seems a little abrupt at times. Some of the sentences also seem a little redundant.

I'd also watch for overuse of "was." For example, "The shore rocks were round and shiny." This will bring an accusation of telling instead of showing. All authors are guilty of it at some point. If the description of the rocks is important, try to find a way to work it into the action. When you take a break from action to describe something, it can be jarring to the reader.

I point out these things because I've done a lot of them in my own writing, and when you go back through your writing, you really need to edit (everyone does). For overuse of "to be" verbs, I find ctrl+F is very useful.