with Kathryn Price, Co-director at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.
The Dark Lies
Within by Sam Payne
Most
people have a will to live, a deep psychological force buried within, which
means when faced with death, they will do anything to survive. But this desire
depends on one thing and one thing only. Hope. People need a reason to cling to
life.
He’d
been generous. He gave them both a reason. He offered them their freedom, but
they disappointed him, much like they’d disappointed him over the past few
years. What was wrong with them? All they had to do was run.
He
slung his rifle over his shoulder and made his way back to the van. The ground
was still saturated from the recent storms, the spongy earth yielded underfoot,
but tonight the midnight sky was clear. The moon lit up the rolling moorland of
Dartmoor making it possible to see across the
vast wilderness of a place he knew better than anyone else. He opened the back of
his van. She was crouched right at the far end, eyes wide, legs pulled tight to
her chest. She looked him right in the eye. That’s what he liked about her,
always defiant. Out of all three of them she was his favourite. He would miss
her. He stood to the side and gestured for her to get out. ‘I’ll give you ten
seconds and then I’m coming for you.’
She
didn’t move.
He
shrugged, took his rifle off his shoulder and aimed it at her, ‘Or I could just
shoot you here, your choice.’
She
scrambled forward, cautiously at first, but when she got to the edge of the van
she leaped out like a cat. He watched as she sprinted straight into the
darkness. He counted to three and then went after her.
Jimmy
Hart was perplexed by the body at the bottom of the stairs. She was lying at an
awkward angle. Her head rested on the first step and dirty blonde hair half
covered her face. Her mouth gaped open and a line of dribble dangled from her
lip like a single thread of a spider’s web. Her body was twisted, her legs
splayed out at different angles and her left arm stretched away from her,
reaching for something that wasn’t there. He should just go, leave her there.
She’d wake up soon enough, but it made him uncomfortable, her being there, so
close to his front door. What if?
Critique by Kathryn Price
This
is a creepy, compelling opening that generates a real air of menace. We
immediately want to know more; there are so many questions posed here and
that’s the essence of creating page-turning fiction in any genre but
particularly with thrillers. Who’s the man in the first, murderous scene;
what’s his motivation; how does he know the character(s) he’s hunting?
Likewise, who’s Jimmy Hart and why does he have such a strange, chilly response
to the discovery of a body at the bottom of his stairs. Who is the body? What’s
she doing there … and is she dead?
Over
and above any of this though is the absolute must-read-on cliffhanger the first
scene leaves us with. The relentless pursuer who gives his victim the most
unsporting of sporting chances to get away; and the girl – defiant, sparky,
cat-like – who we already know is his ‘favourite’. Does she have what it takes
to survive? Great stuff.
The
writing is sharp and sparse, which works well for this kind of tense,
breathless material. There’s minimal, functional description which still
manages to create a clear picture, and the author has mastered the intimate
third person or free indirect viewpoint so that we’re at once inside the POV
characters’ heads but also able to view them from a distance. For less-than-sympathetic
characters, this is really the only choice of viewpoint, as first person can be
far too claustrophobic.
So,
the fundamentals are all in place here. What we need to complete the picture is
more of everything. At the moment,
the details of character, location and tension are so fleeting that it’s only
on reading this back a few times that the piece starts to carry impact. On
first reading, it seems fairly unmemorable because everything is skimmed over
so quickly.
This
applies right from the word go. The very first paragraph, a little vignette of
philosophy, is, we assume, the protagonist musing on – justifying, perhaps? –
his actions. However, in isolation here it’s too brief, too general and clichéd
to really tell us much about him. Anyone could have come up with this – it
doesn’t feel specific to the protagonist. Perhaps the aim is to show us that
this character is a bit of a pseud, thinking that he possesses great insights
into human nature because of what he is and what he does, while in fact he’s
actually still scraping at the banal surface of things. However, it’s a bit
early on to rely on your reader interpreting this subtext, so as a first line
it risks feeling overly generalised.
A
good solution here might be to go with specific detail rather than generalised
observations. Rather than philosophising in the abstract, might our protagonist
think of a few snippets – brief flashbacks, if you like - of what he’s just
done, allowing the life lesson to emerge organically from the events that have
taken place? For example:
People would do anything to survive. It
never stopped surprising him. That woman – the shock of it in her eyes, not
believing death was upon her after everything – still battling till the end.
Her fingernails had been bleeding, he remembered. She’d said to him, ‘Anything,
anything you want’. There was nothing he’d wanted, but the fact that she’d
offered – well.
It was hope, he’d decided as he slung
his rifle over his shoulder. That was the key. Without hope, they’d just give
up. Everyone needs something to live for, after all. That’s why he’d given her
– them - the choice. He gave them both a reason … etc
The
detail of this is very similar but it hopefully feels more specific and rooted
in this particular character’s experience. It draws us more into the
protagonist’s world, because it is an interpretation that could only have come
from him, at that particular moment.
We
then have some brief description of the moorland. Again, more detail here would
add richness and depth. We’re told that he knows this place better than anyone,
but little of this personal knowledge and experience comes through in the way
he perceives it. Could we have more sensory input here, more hints of his
history and ties to the land? For example, the ground is saturated: might he
know instinctively that it’ll be dry by morning but that any footprints will
have disappeared back into the mud? In the moonlight he can see far across the
hills, but what shapes does he pick out? A tor, whose nooks and crannies he climbed
in as a boy; or whose rocks remind him of a burial ground? Hillocks which look
like good hiding places but where, he knows, the marshy ground is treacherous?
Not only would this level of additional detail help to create a more
atmospheric picture but it would help to cement the reader’s sense that he is,
in some way, implacable and inescapable; so familiar with this place that
running from him is like trying to run from death itself.
Likewise,
a touch more detail about the girl in the van can only be a good thing. We have
no idea what she looks like – is she small and fragile or tall and rangy with
legs built for running? Cat-like is a
common simile so it doesn’t tell us much that’s unique about her. By lingering
over her a little longer you’re again giving the reader a chance to know her
and care what happens to her.
By
playing out this opening scene more fully, the subsequent shift to Jimmy’s POV
should feel less jarring. At the moment it comes out of the blue and it feels
as though we’ve barely had the chance to orientate ourselves before we’re
whisked away. Here, again, further detail would be helpful. Jimmy seems to have
a rather unusual way of looking at the world – why is his reaction one of
discomfort to the woman being so close to his front door, rather than distress
at her being there at all, or concern for her safety? And how does he know
she’s going to wake up? (If he knows what’s wrong with her – drink? drugs? –
then it feels disingenuous and tricksy to describe her as a body and make it sound
as though she’s dead). The uncertainty here combines to make Jimmy feel
impenetrable and even psychopathic; without another layer of information we
can’t know whether this is what you intend.
The
overall benefit of extra detail throughout this opening would be to slow down
the pace. It’s often tempting to play exciting or tense scenes out as quickly
as possible but, though it might seem counter-intuitive, a slower pace is often
more suspenseful: it gives the reader time to absorb what’s happened and guess
at what’s coming; to build expectations and rapport with the characters; to
begin to fear for them. After all, like the characters themselves, the reader
needs hope.
A
strong start, though, and I for one would read on.
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