The Story Form - Beginnings . . . Your Offerings . . .

[The Shadow One]

This thread is for those of you who wish to submit your beginnings per my essay in The Writing Class - The Story Form.

[SwordsMaster]

Ok, I'll inaugurate this thread:

If the captain knew he was just about to become part of this story, he would have probably chosen more carefully the words with which to begin the cold and foggy morning of the 11th of November that found him staring into the telescope aimed at the fog on the northwest.

"Bastards" -he said. The first mate concealed a chuckle and the pilot wondered what would happen if he got caught laughing in front of the captain.

"Bastards" - repeated the captain, unaware of the reaction of his crewmen before closing the telescope and rubbing his eye, red after not blinking for so long and turning around to look at the sails.

[The Stranger]

is that an essay??? :inquisitive:...looks like a normal story to me

[The Shadow One]

is that an essay??? :inquisitive:...looks like a normal story to me

Stranger:

[Text edited out upon further review.]

Stranger, you may be looking in the wrong place. THIS IS a story thread -- it correspondes to the thread at the top of the page in Writing Class. My essay appears there, not here.

I know it's a bit confusing, but the essays will appear at the top of the forum page, in one of the writing class threads.

[The Stranger]

damn...i wanted to make one like this...i really dont get it anymore i'm sooooo ~:confused:

so you right the beginnig of your essay here...or other people do...and end it in the sticky?????????????????????????????????????? :inquisitive:

[Ludens]

damn...i wanted to make one like this...i really dont get it anymore i'm sooooo ~:confused:

so you right the beginnig of your essay here...or other people do...and end it in the sticky?????????????????????????????????????? :inquisitive:
In his essay, The Shadow One gave the assignment of writing an opening for a story and posting it here. As a practice in opening stories, something than can be pretty hard.

After viewing The Thin Red Line I had an excellent idea for an opening scene for a story. Sadly, I forgot most of it, since I did not have the intention of continuing it, but it went something like this:


"Something's wrong!" whispered a soldier. "They know we are here!"
Nobody responded.
"Where the hell is the patrol staying?!" he hissed.
All ten members of the scouting party peered out of the ditch into the nightly gloom. There was no sign of the enemy squad that had been patrolling the area.
"We are going to die!"
"Shut up!" the luitenant hissed.
"Nortonians never leave their posts before they are relieved. They must have seen us! Lets bolt while we still have a chance!"
"If you talk any louder, we won't even hear them coming. Now stop being such a chicken!"
"Sir!" Another soldier was pointing towards the road. Four pairs of headlights were approaching.


Not my best work, but it succeeds to some extent in displaying the fear of the soldiers.

[The Shadow One]

damn...i wanted to make one like this...i really dont get it anymore i'm sooooo ~:confused:

so you right the beginnig of your essay here...or other people do...and end it in the sticky?????????????????????????????????????? :inquisitive:

That's okay. When I offered to write the essays, Monk voluntered to sticky the four Writing Class topics up at the front of this forum. The essays themselves -- two have been posted so far, two more (I hope) will be posted this weekend -- are posted one of the four "Writing Class" topics.

When I offered to do the essays, I suggested giving some "homework" for anyone who wanted to improve their writing. Of course, no one is required to participate, but if they want to they can.

On Thursday I posted the Beginnings essay in the "Writing Class" topics. You can find it there. I opened this thread for people who wanted to participate by writing a beginning of their own and posting it here.

So, here's how it works: My Essays (or anyone else who wants a stab at it) in "Writing Class," comments in the thread on Writing Class - Comments, and I'll occassionally open threads like one so that people can show their "homework" if they want to.

I hope that makes sense.

[The Shadow One]

Ok, I'll inaugurate this thread:

If the captain knew he was just about to become part of this story, he would have probably chosen more carefully the words with which to begin the cold and foggy morning of the 11th of November that found him staring into the telescope aimed at the fog on the northwest.

"Bastards" -he said. The first mate concealed a chuckle and the pilot wondered what would happen if he got caught laughing in front of the captain.

"Bastards" - repeated the captain, unaware of the reaction of his crewmen before closing the telescope and rubbing his eye, red after not blinking for so long and turning around to look at the sails.

Swordmaster:

I loved the opening paragraph. Nice bit of dark humor, and nice sentence construction (another topic we'll be talking about soon).

I like how your keep the dialogue to a minimum (one word punches) while your descriptions run longer.

Two suggestions: I don't know where the story is going, but is the specific date important? It kind of jumped out at me like, why the 11th of November as opposed to any other November morning. Dates are funny things; it might be better to avoid the specific date, unless it is essential (or substantive) to the story.

In the last paragraph, you sentence construction fails a bit. At the last, you probably need another comma after long [long, and turning]. I might break the sentence in two, because of the two independent actions -- closing the telescope and rubbing his eye, and turning to look at the sails:

"Bastards," repeated the captain, closing the telescope and rubbing his eye, which was now red after not blinking for so long. Unaware of the reaction of his crewmen, he turned around to look at the sails.

Something like that. It makes it a little easier on the reader to sort out. Just a suggestion.

[The Shadow One]

In his essay, The Shadow One gave the assignment of writing an opening for a story and posting it here. As a practice in opening stories, something than can be pretty hard.

After viewing The Thin Red Line I had an excellent idea for an opening scene for a story. Sadly, I forgot most of it, since I did not have the intention of continuing it, but it went something like this:


"Something's wrong!" whispered a soldier. "They know we are here!"
Nobody responded.
"Where the hell is the patrol staying?!" he hissed.
All ten members of the scouting party peered out of the ditch into the nightly gloom. There was no sign of the enemy squad that had been patrolling the area.
"We are going to die!"
"Peter, shut up!" the luitenant hissed.
"Nortonians never leave their posts before they are relieved. They must have seen us! Lets bolt while we still have a chance!"
"If you talk any louder, we won't even hear them coming. Now stop being such a chicken!"
"Sir!" Another soldier was pointing towards the road. Four pairs of headlights were approaching.


Not my best work, but it succeeds to some extent in displaying the fear of the soldiers.

Ludens:

I like it. All dialogue and no description is one way to quickly advance the story and keep the suspense alive. It has very nice tease to it. If you were continuing the story, it might be helpful to start throwing in some description and setting, now that you've hooked us into the story.

[SwordsMaster]

Two suggestions: I don't know where the story is going, but is the specific date important? It kind of jumped out at me like, why the 11th of November as opposed to any other November morning. Dates are funny things; it might be better to avoid the specific date, unless it is essential (or substantive) to the story.

In the last paragraph, you sentence construction fails a bit. At the last, you probably need another comma after long [long, and turning]. I might break the sentence in two, because of the two independent actions -- closing the telescope and rubbing his eye, and turning to look at the sails:

"Bastards," repeated the captain, closing the telescope and rubbing his eye, which was now red after not blinking for so long. Unaware of the reaction of his crewmen, he turned around to look at the sails.

Both suggestions are absolutely correct. 11th of november has no relevance except that the date is 11th-11 which I thought would be amusing in a nerdy kinda way. The last sentence does feel much smoother in your version, I guess I wrote without stopping to read it myself before submitting...

[AntiochusIII]

I suppose I should submit two different (yet very generic in their forms) beginnings for you to examine. Both were written by me for schoolworks in classes, therefore are quite unpolished in the original versions.

The first one was written in a "journal" (5-6 minutes of writing) based on a picture given to the class, hence the long descriptions and the lack of dialogue. The second was written with haste in a Creative Writing class when I spent almost all my class time reading the Hellsing manga ;) and had to quickly create something to turn in. Hence the dialogue-based nature, since this will fill up the paper quicker, and is produced more fluidly as I let my mind drives my pen, rather than my brain. Both, however, are "long" introductions, mainly the size of what used to normally start novels, rather than short stories and such.

1st:

The sun was shining its lights through a small window high in the wall into a small house. The murmur of the people upstairs, talking quietly about trivial everyday things, echoed through the silent hall. The stairs creaked as two little feet rushed down through them. Many books of various size and shapes were kept to the side, along with the colourful carpets, and a large shelf of various drugs placed high on the walls, a short distance away from the wooden stairs. Most curiously, however, was a single ice skate hanging on the wall in the house of Marietta Godwinson.

Who was Marietta Godwinson, then? She was the little girl whose feet were rushing down the stairs even as we speak. She was a very young lady of large blue eyes, pale white skin, happy round face, shiny golden hair, and plump cheeks that would make you fall in love with her the very moment you set your eyes on them. If there were something strange about her, though, they were how she pouted and whined with some unknown reasons when anybody unknowingly called her "Mary", and how she hated that single ice skate on the wall with a fiery passion.

As she reached the end of the stairs, Marietta called her mother, whose sickly, yet kind face showed up on the upper edge of the stairs. She looked down curiously towards her little girl on that happy Saturday morning in which our story started. Smiling, she asked, "yes, honey?"

2nd:

"The pumpkin head is shaking badly again," a mysterious being in the pumpkin outfit complained. "What is going on?"

"It's always shaking, pumpkinhead. Deal with it." A slender creature beneath a long, black, hooded cloak snapped.

"But it's never been this bad!" The pumpkinhead being snapped back.

"So? It's Halloween. What do you expect?" The hooded creature said irritatingly. This fool was starting to annoy her. "Now shut up and continue walking, we've reached the Black Forest."

The infamous name of the Black Forest did its magic. The pumpkinhead fell silent immediately, and the two strange travellers continued slowly across the distorted landscape. There was something different in the air. Between the graveyard-filled ashes of the desolate plains and the dark shadows of the trees there was no melancholy. The dark, grotesque realm, normally covered in cursed silence, sang its own song that day. Even the charred road that the travellers had been using echoed the rhythm of music.

It was Halloween, the time of the rejoicing dead.

The hooded creature was quick to notice the abrupt change the landscape around them took. Even as they strided slowly through the same old pathway, the plains were out of sight in the thickness of the Black Forest, only to be replaced by the scene of the gigantic mountains. Soon enough, the travellers reached the feet of the mountains, as the pathway led itself into the dark entrance of a gloomy cave. Pumpkinhead was shaking again, this time with the ferocity that made it seems like he could shatter on the spot.

"Enough of this," the hooded creature started to feel increasingly annoyed, "pull yourself together, would you? You are wasting our time."

"But...but...it's the Cave!" The Pumpkinhead's voice rang with terror.

"So what? This is Halloween, fool, and everything's safe today. Didn't we just passed the Black Forest safely? Nothing will disturb us today in the Cave. Have you not heard the land sings? Or do you wish to go another way?" The hooded creature pointed its bony fingers towards the high mountains in front of them. Incredibly steep and dangerous, the spiky mountains casted their shadows on the entire landscape. Nothing could possibly hope to cross them without the help of the witches' magicks. The Pumpkinhead shook his disproportionately large head at the sight.

"F...fine. We'll go through the Cave." He spluttered as they walked towards the gloomy entrance, on their way to the land of the living.

[The Stranger]

That's okay. When I offered to write the essays, Monk voluntered to sticky the four Writing Class topics up at the front of this forum. The essays themselves -- two have been posted so far, two more (I hope) will be posted this weekend -- are posted one of the four "Writing Class" topics.

When I offered to do the essays, I suggested giving some "homework" for anyone who wanted to improve their writing. Of course, no one is required to participate, but if they want to they can.

On Thursday I posted the Beginnings essay in the "Writing Class" topics. You can find it there. I opened this thread for people who wanted to participate by writing a beginning of their own and posting it here.

So, here's how it works: My Essays (or anyone else who wants a stab at it) in "Writing Class," comments in the thread on Writing Class - Comments, and I'll occassionally open threads like one so that people can show their "homework" if they want to.

I hope that makes sense.

it definitly does ~D thanx ow honourable writingmaster :bow:

it might sound sarcastic but it isnt

[The Stranger]

some very cool stories around here...making homework is fun in this class...think i;ll start making mine ~:)

[RabidGibbon]

*Heres the opening of a story I started but never finished, which, come to think of it is just about all of them*

The grass on the High plains south of the Wentwash looks permanently dead, being knee high, yellow and as dry as the desert. Indeed that whole wasteland is one of the driest place‘s on earth, and by god we were finding it out only two days away from the river. I don’t think a man pissed all day, what with the sweat and spit we were using up (because although its grassy on the high plains its dusty too, aye, and your mouth is soon full of a strange bitter tasting gunk).

So there we were, the unending yellow plain beneath our feet and the unending blue overhead, and did I mention that every Tom, Dick and Harry ‘tween the two rivers had turned up and brought his spear - egged on by Kolosokay, have no doubt, and eager to have a crack at the Utlanders as the savages call us. I can see it now, the mass of the natives, stretching back far enough that they’d have looked like a column on the march it if wasn’t for the fact that they were spread across a front of 4 miles. There were more than enough to go round, as young Raffburn put it.

Looking back its hard to imagine which was more worrying - the sight of every hairy half naked man in the world waving his spear at us, or the Viceroy wondering amicably to himself where on earth the artillery train could have got to, and whether or not he should form a square with the baggage at the centre, sounding all the while like a old gent debating whether he should have crumpets or scones with his afternoon tea. Which, by the way is about the only sort of decision we figured he was competent to make.

[Ludens]

This is the opening of the story I am currently working on. Or, at least, the story I want to be working work on. ~:)


Chapter one
Car Park

The sky lying over the car park was pitch-black, but the car park was not dark. It was basking in the artificial light of the great Christmas tree set up in the centre, and in the multi-coloured glow flowing from the supermarket. It was a cheerful sight, or at least it would have been a cheerful sight if there hadn’t been trash lying everywhere. Here and there, the cars of late-night shoppers stood on the asphalt, some close to, some far from the Christmas tree.
And in a dark corner of the car park, as far away from the tree as possible, Helen heaved the last of her bags into the booth of her old car. She swept the sweat from her brow, which had formed there despite the cold. The temperature was so low her breath turned into mist. She made a quick check to see if she hadn’t forgotten anything, paying special attention to the bag that contained the apples. Helen liked apples. Her friends were always surprised that she thought something as common as an apple could be tasteful as well as healthy. And because it was Christmas, she had bought herself a bag of expensive, southern ones, which she normally considered as beyond her means.
Nothing was missing, so she closed the booth and pushed the shopping cart to the rack. When she turned back to the car, she found herself face to face with a tramp.
“Can you spare a pound, miss? I haven’t et in days,” the beggar said.
“Oh? What happened to the two pounds I gave you a few hours ago?” Helen walked round the dirty man and headed for her car. The tramp followed her.
“Please miss, it’s Christmas and I aint got a home to go to. Have mercy,” he pleaded.
Ignoring him, Helen unlocked the door of her car and sat down behind the steer. She pulled the door shut and leaned back. She realised she was hungry. Damn. The apples, and all the other foodstuffs, were in the back of the car. Helen considered stepping out to get them, but the tramp was still nearby.
Instead, she turned the key in the ignition lock. The engine stuttered and, almost immediately, fell silent again. The second attempt at starting made engine turn for a full four seconds before stopping. In the rear-view mirror Helen could see the tramp grinning at her. She ignored him.
The third try proved successful however, and Helen allowed herself to grin back at the beggar. Next, she flipped the control-switch of the heater, but the wretched thing refused to respond to her touch.
Helen leaned back against the tattered seat-cover and sighed. She felt the familiar signs of a headache coming up. Only one more hour of this, she told herself, and then she would be safe from the intractable moods of her car. One hour was all that separated her from home, and a nice, long, and above all hot bath.