"False Alarm": A Power Club Short Story

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, but I want to thank everyone for stopping by and checking out the blog. Here's the first part of a Power Club™ prequel I wrote about a year ago. Enjoy.

            The tiny spider inched its way across the bathroom sink, up the faucet, down the faucet.  It circled the drain twice before it must have realized it was being watched.

            Denise laid her hand in front of the spider, as much to block its path as to say hello.  “Don’t be afraid,” she said softly.  “I won’t hurt you.”  She hoped the spider would crawl into her hand.  She could almost feel its tiny legs crawling into her palm, like little mechanical arms, working together.

            “Who are you talking to?” came her brother’s voice from outside the open bathroom door.  “OOH, SICK!”

            Something blurred past Denise, creating a gust of wind that blew her golden hair into her face.  There was a loud SLAM! against the counter.  When Denise looked for the spider again, all she saw was an ugly black mark.

            “VEE!” she screamed.  “How could you?”

            Vee, who had already left the bathroom, reappeared in the doorway.  “It was just a spider,”  he said with a shrug.

            Denise rolled her eyes and brushed past her brother.  If she had to explain it to him, he would never understand.

            Vee, never one to let matters drop, not even for a nine-year-old, followed her into the kitchen.  “I was doing you a favor.  How come you’re not scared of spiders like normal girls?”

            Denise turned to face him.  At eleven, she towered over her brother.  Her height gave her a sense of superiority, even though Vee could be on the other side of the house as soon as she uttered a syllable.  Mostly, though, she bristled at the phrase “normal girls.”

            “Vee, you’re so ignorant,” she said, using a word she’d recently learned in school—the normal school she went to, not the special school Vee had to go to.  “Mom’s not afraid of spiders.”

            “Mom’s not a girl.  She’s a scientist,” he said, plopping down in his favorite chair at the breakfast table.  “When are we going to eat?  I’m hungry!”

            Denise checked her watch—the new one with the pink band and glittering hands, a gift from her father for getting an A on a science quiz.  She had just enough time to fix Vee breakfast before her school bus arrived.  Vee would loiter for awhile and then run to his special school, which was only two blocks away. He could be there in a few seconds.  Denise didn't mind waiting on the bus though. She could talk to her friends on the ride to school, which took her through the old downtown, past shops and office buildings that stood several stories high. She got to see things her brother couldn't, because he wasn't allowed to leave the district.

            She pulled the breakfast cereal out of the pantry and the milk out of the fridge.  It wasn’t her job, Denise’s mother had told her, to feed Vee.  He was old enough to take care of himself.  But Denise loved the ordinary tasks of taking care of the house and making food.  They gave her the feeling of being normal while living in the district among kids who had special powers.

            “Are you going to clean up that mess?” she said as she sat down at the head of the table, a spot normally reserved for her father.

            “What mess?”

            “The mess you left in the bathroom.  The spider?”

            Vee looked as if it were already a distant memory.  “You’re the one who likes to clean house.  You do it.”

            “Vee,” she said in her strongest mother-voice, the voice Mom would surely use if she didn’t have to go to work so early.

            “Oh, all right.”  Vee blurred, vanished, and then reappeared a split second later.  “Done!”

            Denise thought she should check to make sure Vee had disposed of the spider’s remains, but decided against it.  Mom and Dad wouldn’t check.  They had told Denise they trusted her and Vee to do as they were told.  Denise thought they should be stricter, especially with Vee. 

            “No, you can’t go to Taylor Gardner’s house after school,” she said absently.  “You have to come home and do chores.”

            Vee, stuffing a spoonful of Raisin Bran into his mouth, hadn’t said a word.

            “How’d you know I was going to ask if I could go to Taylor’s?”

            Denise felt uncertain.  It was like she’d heard the conversation before it had happened.  She could hear it all, from Vee’s high pitched first request to his whining in protest and her ultimate refusal.         

            “I just knew,” she said, refusing to look him in the eye.  “Finish your cereal.”

Click here for Part 2. 

Does Your Story Write Itself?

Writing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Writing stories, someone once said, is like raising a child. You, the author-parent, set out with dreams of where you want to story to go, what you want it to accomplish, who it's going to meet, and how it’s going to “turn out.”

But stories, like children, have minds of their own.

They take detours. They explore dangerous places. They bring home uninvited guests.

What’s a good author-parent to do?

I’m currently trying to figure this one out. Three-quarters of the way through the second revision of my novel-in-progess, The Power Club™, a new character has entered the story.This character was in earlier drafts, but he just didn’t fit into this one, so he was omitted.

But, suddenly, there he is again.

By bringing back this uninvited guest, my story is starting to assert its independence.

Sometimes, this can be a good thing; other times, not. Writers should always be in control of their stories. A grad school professor once told me that when a story “writes itself,” it's a sign the author hasn't thought it through carefully. 

And yet sometimes those unexpected detours and uninvited guests can be the best thing about the story.

Back when I was working on my comic book, Gold Dust, I introduced a minor character who appears for one panel. A short time later, when I had the opportunity to write a story for an anthology that was never published, I decided to use my minor character. At this point, I still had no idea who she was or her motivation.

But as I was writing the story, she told me who she was—and her background and setting worked well with the end-of-the-world story I was telling.

(And, yes, I am being purposefully vague.  There’s always the hope of publishing that story some day.)

Characters, of course, don’t actually talk to writers—though it doesn’t hurt to believe they can. Writing usually involves your subconscious working itself out through your characters.

The lesson I took from this was to let my stories live and breathe.  Let them explore their world, but hang back and make sure they don’t stray too far. 

Naturally, this entails judgment and guesswork. How do you know when a story is straying too far from its original purpose? You don’t—though repeated practice can develop your sense of what might work and what definitely will not.

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the “uninvited guest," but I’ll let him stick around for awhile and see what develops.

What about you?  What do you do when your story writes itself?

If you like this article, you may also like:

• "How to Stop Procrastinating: Trust the Writing Process"
• "Arguing with Sharks: Overcoming Your Writing Fears"
• "Letting the Fiction Take Over: How to Turn Your Reality into Fiction"

Why You Should Write Your Character’s Biography

Image by jjpacres via Flickr

You’re soaring right along in your novel or short story when suddenly you’re stuck.  Your character reaches the crisis point or has to make a decision.  What does he do?  Does he go left or right? 

All writers face this dilemma at one point or another.  The great idea you had in the back of your mind now seems unworkable.  Your character could make either choice and it doesn’t matter.  Or, worse, you’ve been “winging” it all along and now there’s no wind to keep your story aloft.

But much uncertainty can be avoided if you take one simple precaution:  Before you write the story itself, write your main character's biography.

A character biography is not the same thing as your story.  Whereas your story will probably center on one crucial event or series of related events in your character’s life (“How Luke defeated Darth Vader”, “How Dorothy traveled to Oz and got back home”), the biography is an account of everything that’s happened in the character's life up until the moment we encounter her in the story.

A biography includes date and place of birth, parents’ names, siblings (if any), friends, the character’s physical attributes (height, weight, hair color, eye color, and so on), occupation, education, and even seemingly minor aspects such as her favorite color, favorite music, and sense of humor.

Furthermore, a biography does not merely list these aspects.  A biography should incorporate them into a mini-narrative – four or five pages, max— to show you how the details weave together and form the sum total of your character's fictional life.

The most important thing about your character biography is that the vast majority of these details will never be mentioned in your story.

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So why write a character biography?

Because the more you know about your character, the more you know whether he will turn left or right, how he will behave in the crisis, and the probable outcomes from his choices.

Think about the choices you’ve made as a living, breathing human being.  Whether it’s who to marry, where to live, what job to take, or even what to order for lunch, weren't those choices based on some combination of your previous experiences, fears, or preferences? 

If you know you like chocolate cake because you’ve always liked chocolate cake, you’re more apt to order it for dessert than the peach meringue rhubarb pie, which you’ve never had before and which doesn’t sound appealing because you don’t like peaches or rhubarb.  On the other hand, if you’re sick of chocolate because you had a mocha almond shake yesterday, you might take a chance on something new.

So it is with your character.  If a group of older boys taunted her on the playground when she was 11, she might be wary of men as she grows older.  In The Da Vinci Code, we learn that Robert Langdon nearly drowned as a child, an experience which left him claustrophobic; not only does this detail reveal more about his character, it plays a key role in the story.

While writing my own novel, I’ve learned that because my young character likes root beer, he is favorably disposed toward a character who gives him root beer candy; this leads him to make a crucial decision later in the book.  Also, his devotion to a particular TV series influences how he interacts with certain other characters.

Know your character as well as (or even better than) you know yourself, and you’ll know exactly how he’ll respond in any given situation.  You may even find yourself saying the story is writing itself.

What has your character biography taught you about your character?