The Nameless Horror

The lights dim and the curtain falls.

I’d have given you anything, Alice, if you’d just asked me. You knew my share of the take was going to pay for my son’s treatment, some of it. Still you took everything and damn near killed me doing it. I buried Jack in his tiny coffin a week ago, and you should’ve hidden better. All’s turned to dust, and your blood’s all over the floor and I don’t have anyone left to love.

The barrel at my temple. Curve of the trigger on my finger.

The lights dim and the curtain falls.

Chuck Wendig runs a regular flash fiction challenge on his site. This week, 100 words only. “Oh ho ho,” I thought. “I can do 100 words even while Future Wife is killing my brain with television.” And so it proved, and this is mine.

I might, of course, be cheating. Chuck wanted a whole tale, and while I think there’s one here - the narrator and Alice were clearly thieves of some sort, as well as lovers, she double-crossed him and took a whole score, money that would’ve saved his son, and now he’s buried his kid he’s come and killed her before topping himself - but it’s mostly inferred. But hey, I’m cunning. Also, exactly 100 words. Skillz, people. Skillz.

Reposted because I initially did this as a link post, and Tumblr doesn’t let you change types. Moron, me.

Characters should change over the course of the story. This is known as an “arc”, which you and me should really already know, but if you read some of my initial drafts you’d be forgiven for thinking I was writing for AVATAR, where NOTHING CHANGES AT ALL. Even if they ultimately return to their original state, the ride between should be up and down if there’s to be AWESOME CHARACTER DRAMA!!!

In planning, write the name of each main character. Describe each of them in terms of their personality at the start of the story. Then describe each of them as they are at the end. What they’ve learned and how they’ve changed.

If you can’t do this, your characters need work. (You moron, John.)

I may refer to this in future as the Harry S. Plinkett Rule, after the brilliant “describe the characters in THE PHANTOM MENACE without using their physical appearance or role” part of the equally brilliant 70-minute Phantom Menace review.

I’m sure some of you can think of brilliant examples of fiction with a pitch-perfect, ‘this could be real life’ sense of place running through it. The LA of Michael Connelly’s novels. The London of Billingham. The New York of SEX AND THE CITY.

[What bugs me most about thrillers or SF novels is] either the stock main characters – almost entirely rugged Sam Fisher/Jack Bauer types, with or without a criminal past, or else thinly-veiled Mary Sues of the author – or else the stakes. It’s always the whole world/universe/humanity/US at risk if Stubble McChin/Feisty McBoobs doesn’t punch a lot of guys in the face/eyestalks/cybernetic death appendages.

'The Razor Gate' is an outstanding novel. With characters that you instantly feel empathy for, a setting which is perfect and an uncompromising style which sets the pace early and never lets up, until the last words. Highly recommended to all!