Yay! I’m back at it! The actual writing part–not the thinking-through-what-my-character-wants-and why-it matters part.
Only this time, as you know, I’m taking a more strategic approach. Before, when I had a good idea for a book or story, I’d start hammering out the words, never thinking about what had to be in an opening scene to make it effective.
Now, I know better (or know more, anyway). Here’s what I’ve learned should be included in an opening scene:
- What needs to happen
- Who it needs to happen to
- Why it needs to happen now
- What the protagonist wants (internal desire)
- Why she wants it
- What her misbelief (internal fear) is
- The consequences of the event (action)
- The context of the story
- The context of the world/setting
- Why the event and consequences matter
- What the event means to the protagonist at this moment in her life
- Explain that there’s a secret and why it’s important
- Tell the reader where the story is going
- Give it all away! (Readers care about why and how something happens more than “what” happens).
- Make clear the protagnoist’s subjective worldview
- (And don’t equate suspense with giving the reader too little information to care)
Oh, and be entertaining and engaging.
Uh, yeah, right…
Ok, here goes… draft 1 (ok, I’ve written this section a dozen times already, but let’s call it draft 1):
Introducing the first scene of The Phoenix Cell Savior (my new and not-yet-determined title!) (And yes, for the moment, as much as I cringe, I’m going with the American spelling…)
“No.”
The word burns on my lips, bubbling up from the lava of long-simmering anger boiling within me. I match my mom’s hard, determined stare.
“I’m not going.”
Mom sucks in a small breath, her lips pursed into a thin “o”.
“This is not a negotiation, Lyra.” Mom grips her hands on the back of the shabby couch in our shabby rented bungalow in this rundown part of town in this rundown corner of upstate New York. “We have to leave. They’re too close.”
They. The they that has haunted me for half my childhood, the reason we’ve been on the run for nine years.
The government agents who hunt us like animals because of me.
Because I am a freak of nature.
Because I am the only one in the world who has a genetic mutation called “phoenix cells”—cells that always regenerate no matter the injury or illness.
Which makes me immortal.
Which makes me the key to our government’s world domination.
Doctors discovered my shocking and unique condition when I was 8, when I survived the unsurvivable, a devastating virus called Hecate’s Plague that killed everyone who was infected with it, including my little six-year-old sister Ivy.
My parents discovered my shocking and unique value when the doctors and scientists and researchers kept me isolated for months on end painfully prodding and probing every inch of my body with excruciating thoroughness. After I endured biopsies and surgeries and bone marrow needles the length of my hand, my parents learned the tests were not for my benefit, but for the government’s. We—America—had recently started a war overseas against the Middle-Eastern Bloc of nations and military researchers believed they could finish it by cloning my cells. Imagine an army of super soldiers who could never die…. Imagine the possibilities for future wars…
Instead, my parents imagined my torture and rescued me from my living hell.
We’ve been on the run ever since.
In nine years, I have lived in 21 towns across America, have had 21 different names and 21 different makeovers.
Today is supposed to be number 22.
Mom, a former concert violinist in our old life, our real life, rushed home this morning from her job at the coin-operated laundry in the almost-barren strip mall on the edge of Route 16, with steely resolve. “I saw them,” she told my dad and me, as she grabbed our patched-up backpacks from the hall closet.
She’d S.O.S’d my dad at his work—he’d been an accountant before, but now he paints houses. When he got Mom’s message, he dropped his roller mid-stroke on Mrs. Tillerson’s living room wall, and rushed out. The consequence will be, no doubt, another lost job. We can’t afford another lost job.
Now Dad sits on the lumpy couch, his hand resting lightly on top of Mom’s iron grip. At one time, I thought their affection for each other was cute, but now it’s irritating. In a household of three, it’s always two against one.
“You know she’s being paranoid,” I say to Dad. “She sees boogeymen everywhere.”
“Watch your tone, Lyra,” Dad snaps.
My chin flies up as if I’d been slapped. Yes, Dad always sides with Mom, always demurs to her sightings, always picks up and moves without complain, but he’s always sympathetic to my frustrations.
“Someday…” he’d say wistfully, drawing me into a bear hug.
Well, that someday is now.
I look hard at Dad, then at Mom.
“I’m done.”
I swipe up my leather jacket, stamp to the door and the whole cardboard bungalow shakes when I slam it.
I’m done, I’m done, I’m done. The anger, the lava beast within me, roils and churns. No more. I’m not going to be a pawn in anybody’s game anymore—my parents’ or the government’s. It’s my life; my choice. I will not accept an eternity of scurrying like a sewer rat, nor will I let the government turn me into a goddamn lab rat.
Seething, I slip under the broken chain link fence at the end of our street and dart across the empty, wasteland of a field, still wet and muddy from the early April snow melt. My thin canvas thrift store shoes are soaked, but I don’t care. I don’t care about what’s “safe” or what’s “good for me” anymore. If I want to get my goddamn feet wet, then I’ll get my goddamn feet wet.
I hear a train in the distance and I sprint toward the rusting railroad tracks that cut through the field. I jump onto the rails, the cold wind buffeting me. I feel my legs tremble from the vibrations on the iron rods, then I see the freight train round the curve in the distance, a roaring monster hurtling toward me.
Move! Its shrill whistle shrieks.
I don’t. I stand my ground, my feet spread apart, balancing on the rails, absorbing the shuddering tremors, and I scream into the gray air, a crazy, bitter laugh drowned by the thundering train. I feel my heart pump wildly and feel my skin prickle with goosebumps.
But I don’t feel fear.
At the last second, I fling myself off the track as the train clatters past and I feel alive. I smooth back my wild black curls even as I hear my mom’s exasperation in my head. Good God, Lyra, why do you have a death wish?
I don’t, I constantly tell her. I have a life wish. I want to live, to feel the rush and exhilaration of being alive—not placidly accept the stifling drone of my existence.
“That stifling drone of your existence has kept you safe these past nine years,” my mom always snaps.
No fucking kidding.
For the past nine years that we’ve been on the run—since I was 8—I have most definitely been safe. And secure. And protected. I have also been lonely. And isolated. And alone. Since I was 11 and begged my parents to let my new neighbor Piper stay for a sleepover and my parents refused in case she asked too many questions, I have been friendless. Since I was 13 and wanted to join the school’s volleyball team, which would have meant filling out a medical consent form and suspicion about us if we had not, I have been homeschooled. Since I was 16 and had to abandon my secret boyfriend without a word when we up and moved in the middle of the night, I have been dateless.
I pick myself up, and swipe at the mud on my brown bomber leather jacket my prized possession. It’s real leather with a real sheepskin collar and a real, hefty price tag I could never afford. Good thing I know how to shoplift; good thing I know how to lie. Mom actually believed me when I gushed over my incredible “find” at the thrift store. That was four towns ago—or five?—no one’s coming after me for it.
I feel calmer now, after my train-dodge. The lava beast recedes into its crevice in my stomach. It always does after I defy death, my favourite pastime. Base jumping with homemade parachutes was fun off the craggily cliffs in Utah (only six broken bones, all of which healed before I hobbled home) and rock climbing without ropes in the Appalachians was fun (rubbed my skin raw on all 10 fingers, plus a concussion, all of which healed before I made it home) and motocross racing in northern California with the secret boyfriend was fun (cracked ribs, cut cheek, all of which healed before the secret boyfriend and I returned to his home). If death can never find me, I can damn well chase it.
I slog through the field back toward our neighbourhood. I take a deep breath. Once, I tried to calculate how many breaths I might take before I somehow, someday expire. I read that an average person who lives till 80 will breathe about 672 million times. How many more than that do I have in me? A billion? A trillion? A googol—10 to the 100th power? Am I really immortal? Will I truly be here in a hundred years? A thousand? I age, obviously. I’m not frozen as an 8-year-old kid. The doctors—before they turned on us—told my parents they suspect I’ll age normally until I’m about 40 or so. That’s when normal people’s cells start to deteriorate—descending into old age. But they think I’ll keep aging at the rate I do now, which would make me live to 1,000.
Yay. I’ll be a 1,000-year-old 40-year-old.
Forever.
The thought terrifies me. What am I going to do on my own for centuries? My parents will die—everyone I’ve ever encountered will die and I’ll still be, what, running from place to place, an ephemeral ghost on the fringes of society?
My stomach squeezes in fear, the fear I live with every day, every minute of my forever life. Why can’t my parents see that? Why can’t they put aside their concerns for my safety just once to see what the real villain is?
Hot tears sting my eyes and I impatiently brush them away. I’m supposed to be invincible, not melting into a blubbering mess. It’s a cruel irony that my phoenix cells will fix any physical symptom. I may feel pain, but it’s temporary and I have the comforting assurance it will always pass; why, God, in your malicious sense of humour, would you not grant me the same powers for my mind? Why make me immortal, then allow me to suffer interminably?
No.
Something’s got to change.
It will change.
I will change it. And my parents will just have to understand. They’ll have to accept that, as always, Mom’s being paranoid—like when we were in Michigan where we fled in the middle of the night because she saw a glint of a black vehicle on the highway outside of town. There are others who drive black cars—or the car could have been dark gray or midnight blue—or government agents may now drive tangerine and lemon-sherbert-coloured cars for all we know—but Mom insisted we pack up immediately.
I sigh as I crawl underneath the fence, careful not to tear my jacket. I know my parents mean well. I understand they gave up their whole lives—their careers and friends and families—to keep me safe… but to stifle me… they’ll have to understand… they will understand… if I just do a better job of explaining it…
I squelch across the ditch. My feet are sodden. And cold. I shiver in the gray chill. Maybe I shouldn’t have ventured into the field.
I scramble onto the crumbling road. Everything in this country is crumbling. After ten years, the MidEast War still drags on, draining every penny from the government coffers. I would never tell my parents this, but sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I remained a lab rat. Could my phoenix cells have stopped this war long ago, like the researchers wanted? Could I have saved the lives of the thousands of soldiers who have died overseas, the hundreds of thousands of MidEast civilians who were caught in the crossfire? Could I have prevented our government’s inhumane use of chemical weapons on its enemies? Have I single-handedly doomed our country and our world by not sacrificing myself and my cells all those years ago?
I draw my jacket around me, hunched against the increasing wind, as I pass a small boarded up house, plastered with contamination stickers.
Maybe it’s not just the war victims I could have saved.
Maybe I could have saved our neighbour, Mrs. Rodrigues.
She was a spritely, nosy old lady who insisted every time I passed her house that she would set me up with her 17-year-old grandson as soon as he came for a visit from Louisiana. I lied and said I had a boyfriend, but Mrs. Rodriguez scoffed. “You can never have too many boyfriends,” she laughed.
Two days ago, she contracted Hecate’s Plague.
The virus that killed my sister, that killed my childhood.
It’s back and back with a vengeance.
Across the country thousands of people have died and the government seems helpless to halt the scourge because all the research dollars to find a cure or vaccine were long ago diverted into military spending.
But what if my cells could have helped? What if, nine years ago, the doctors looking to clone me, could also have used my cells to find a cure? After all, I survived the disease.
I asked my mom about that one day when I was 10. It was the second anniversary of Ivy’s death. We were nowhere near her grave—never again could we visit it—but we were in another cemetery, pretending this was Ivy’s tombstone.
“Could I have saved her?” I asked, my stomach knotting. I remember not knowing what I wanted the answer to be. Yes, you could have saved her and she’d still be with us but you didn’t, or no, you couldn’t have saved her and you’ll always have to live with the grief and pain and loss.
Mom shook her head; a wave of relief washed over me, followed closely by a torrent of guilt. I was glad I couldn’t have saved Ivy? She’d been my best friend, my playmate, my real-life soul sister. Despite the two-year age difference and her blonde hair, everyone assumed we were twins.
Mom tried to explain the science. “To create a cure, doctors need antibodies from a person who fought the disease; but your body used your phoenix cells—not antibodies—and your phoenix cells won’t work on other people. Their immune systems attack them.”
“Then how come they want to clone me?”
Mom sighed. “They thought they could replace all of someone’s cells with cells like yours.”
“But that’s impossible… Then they’d be me instead of them.” I shuddered at the image in my mind of rows upon rows of camo-clad 10-year-old look-alike soldiers.
“That’s why we’re here, honey,” Mom said, pulling me close.
I don’t remember where “here” was then; long ago I gave up trying to track our meanderings. Sometimes we’d head north, across North Dakota; other times we were in Pennsylvania or Rhode Island. Often, we’d simply get into our non-descript car with “borrowed” license plates and just drive.
For a moment I wonder where we’ll be tonight until I catch myself. We’ll be right here.
I refocus and rehearse how I’m going to convince my parents. Rational and reasonable, that’s what I have to be. Keep the lava beast locked up. Don’t lose your temper.
I repeat to myself: We don’t have to go. You probably saw health officials who were dealing with the plague and thought they were agents.
Again: We don’t have to go. You probably saw health officials who were dealing with the plague and thought they were agents.
Once more: We don’t have to g—
I round the corner to my house.
And stop dead in my tracks.
The street is full of sleek, shiny new cars.
Black cars.
Agent cars.
My stomach lurches and a streak of fear, as sharp as electricity, jolts through me.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God… Mom was right…
Why did I think we could stay? Why did I think we’d be safe? I stand, frozen, as coils of guilt and shame snake themselves around me. Agents, dressed in black swarm the street, like giant ants scouring for crumbs. I see a pair of burly agents emerge from our house. They drag my mom and dad out, their hands cuffed behind their backs.
“Mom!” I instinctively screech and instantly I clamp my mouth shut.
Too late.
The agents’ heads swivel like robots toward me. In a nanosecond, they’ve drawn their guns; in a millisecond they’re after me, the footfalls of giant elephants pounding on the cracked pavement.
“Run, Lyra!” Mom screams at me, her arms twisted behind her back, her face contorted with concern.
I will never question my mom again.
I run.
Did I fit it all in? Did I answer all the questions? To be determined, but it’s a start. After all, how do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
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