Author’s note: Following the Neil Gaiman Master Class series, he offers the following exercise. Take one of the simple settings below and write a pageabout it, trying to undermine the reader’s expectations. For example, you’re writing about a man at a party who is talking to a beautiful woman. What he wants is probably obvious. Try to lead the reader in a different direction by not revealing his desire up front, or by revealing a surprising motivation.
The rock shifted under her fingers and the scream that nearly came from her mouth conflicted with her choked intake of breath as a kind of squeaked whimper. The piece of cliff face peeled away from the sheer surface like tree bark and tumbled away past her right ear bouncing down the 10 meters of incline until smashing to pieces with a dull thump on the unforgiving rocks below.
Sweat burned rivulets down her face and stung her eyes. Her whole upper body was trembling from the effort of climbing. She was panting hard as she blinked desperately to clear her sight.
“This was a mistake Claire.” she thought, “a very big, very high mistake.”
She scanned the surface around her through blurring vision until noting the lengthwise fissure, for a moment she hesitated not knowing what may have made its home in there before thrusting her hand as deep as she could manage, then formed a fist, grating knuckles against stone, definitely tearing up her skin. She hissed between teeth as she used the ‘grip’ to lift her body and right leg enough to find a toe hold. Then she lunged up, her body clear of the cliff aside from her fist grip. Heart in mouth she exalted as her left arm slammed triumphantly onto the small ledge she’d seen.
Small, barely 30cm deep, more of a shelf than a ledge, but enough to sit on, enough to rest. Get her body back under some kind of control. She let out a ragged yell of effort as she heaved herself up and onto the outcrop, scraping her chest painfully through her t-shirt and then carefully shuffling her body around with secure handgrips before swinging her feet out to dangle from her impromptu seat.
She nearly fell from what she saw had arrived below, flinching back so hard from the figure that she nearly shifted her buttocks off the ledge, she braced on a knife’s edge for a moment before finding her balance and shrinking as far back against the rock face as possible.
The figure watched impassively, honestly, she admitted to herself, it didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, it looked like it was carved from basalt, featureless and grey, the surface looking marked my a million tiny chips and scratches, merely the suggestion of a face and the tilt of its head letting her know that it was focused on her. Head cocked to one side like a person might when considering something but the blank smooth “face” gave no indication of what that might be.
The only thing Claire knew for sure is the thing terrified her, even here 10 meters up she felt her skin crawl at the sight of it. It hadn’t said anything, perhaps it couldn’t but it’s hulking mass although shaped like a human, was lumpy and disfigured, while she thought it might be around 2 meters tall it didn’t make a sound when it moved. No grinding crunching earthy sounds. Silence. Not even when it stepped down on gravel like below. The impassive watcher made her stress levels spike again.
So she forcibly turned her head to look away from the thing below, steeling herself to look up, to her escape, or fall. First, she estimated just two body lengths until the rim of the cliff and then she released a sigh of pent up tension, a million healthy-looking hand and footholds were visible. The small fissure she’d used below blossomed into a massive open gash in the cliff that offered her a million ways to finish the climb.
Grinning triumphantly she looked back down at the figure below. It stood unmoving head cocked on the opposite side now. The face impression still angled directly at her. Her smile curled a little at the sight and she found her mouth was suddenly very dry. Swallowing a few times she turned and moved to finish the cliff. Her body ached and her hands bled freely. But she brushed away the discomfort and focused. She took a moment to rub rock dust on her fingers, palms, face and forehead to soak up the sweat before lunging for her chosen route.
Within moments she triumphantly cleared the edge. Right arm grabbing roots and branches of a thick bush to help her pull her body up and then flop onto her back the grassy term fresh and cool on her arms and neck. She lay there taking deep lungfuls of air. A great tension releasing from her body, to be replaced by instant fatigue. She cautiously peeked over the edge of the cliff back to the base. The figure remained there but was in motion again. It’s formally fixated gaze seemed to be moving back and forth. It brought to mind a person trying to find the source of a sound. Was it ‘looking’ for her? She snapped her head back and slowly moved backwards away from the cliff edge.
Whatever was happening, now was time to run and run some more. She could figure out what to think about all this later. She turned intent on doing just that and froze, no more than 20 meters away stood another figure. But this one was massive, maybe 3 or 4 meters high. Its body resembling a human in only the vaguest of ways, two elongated arms, two squat legs, a wedged boulder for a head all in a dusty white stone resembling rough marble. The wedge at the top swivelled smoothly as she watched in growing horror a vein of quartz demarking its attention which had fixed upon her. She remained locked in place, like the rabbit caught in the oncoming headlights, “I need to move, I need to move” her mind bleated.
It surged forward, tearing a scream of pure horror from her throat as it loped and stumbled toward her on its deformed arms like some sort of lopsided gorilla, one arm raised high and she saw at that moment the promise of a violent and crushing death. Her legs remained rooted in place, her body rebelling against her. She closed her eyes and with a mental sob, waited for the inevitable.
She felt more than heard the impact, the grinding crunch of stone on stone and felt her face and upper body peppered with what felt like needles. It was followed immediately by what sounded like the crack of a lightning bolt, a noise so hard and shocking that it reverberated through the ground, up to her teeth, through every bone in her body, but she wasn’t dead, she was sure of that. She opened a single eye, terrified and curious of what was there. A dark grey basalt wall was an arms reach before her. The figure from before now stood before so close she could see every scratch and battle scar adorning its form.
Her stunned mind refused to take it all in, it must have jumped the cliff she realised numbly, A 20-meter vertical jump so well done that it landed just before her in time… In time too. The marble figure regarded the smaller one, who held it’s the great fist in both of its own. Then, for the first time, Claire heard the basalt figure make a sound, a deep rumbling growl, the sound of avalanches, the sound of earthquakes and storms. Elemental. Then the battle exploded before her.
Author’s note: Following the Neil Gaiman Master Class series, he offers the following exercise. Take one of the simple settings below and write a pageabout it, trying to undermine the reader’s expectations. For example, you’re writing about a man at a party who is talking to a beautiful woman. What he wants is probably obvious. Try to lead the reader in a different direction by not revealing his desire up front, or by revealing a surprising motivation.
The dusty dry yard was nearly silent in the sweltering heat, the only sounds breaking through the oppressive heat haze were the distant buzzing of cicadas in the distance and the repetitive clicking of knitting needles emanating from under the sagging awning of the front porch. Two figures could be seen there on the bench swaddled in clothes that seemed too dark and far too heavy for the desert conditions.
Their hands, gnarled and bloated like old tree roots, moved with a fluidity and speed that spoke of years and decades of practice. After what seemed like days in the oppressive heat the clicking finally slowed, subsided and stopped for the first time in what seemed like forever. One of the forms stretched her arms out in a long extended yawn, the moment let out a such a series of loud sucking popping sounds the cat curled up at her feet stirred for long enough to shoot an irritated eye up at the crone before returning to its all-important nap that she’d dared to disturb.
“Ahhh,” her voice rasped like sandpaper “it’s looking good, Isn’t it Soteria? Yes, very good.”
Bony fingers trace along the long folds of fabric that had piled up beside them. The base of which thrummed with such violent explosions of vibrant colour that in the direct sunlight it hurt the eye if viewed directly. But as the fabric continued the colours became duller and duller, muddied and worn. By the centre of the pile they had become so dark as to seem like pale imitations of their origins and now sitting on the top of the pile the colour had all but bleached away to leave nothing more than a white peak like the snow-capped crags of a mountain.
“Such a beautiful tapestry you wove little one.” She crooned out to the figure in the yard
“Melinoe, don’t be cruel.”
Soteria, evidently the other figure, kinder, with a smoother gentler voice, reminded him of an archetypal grandmother, the one who would always bring cookies out the moment you arrived. Melinoe turned with what the onlooker imagined to be a baleful stare. He could feel the cold hatred of that stare and given the burning heat that surrounded him it must have had a millennium of weight behind it. Which despite the horror of everything made his cracked lips part in a smile.
Melione sniffed audibly before turning back to the onlooker. He was suspended by wire, fixed to the pole a few meters of the yard. His skin was burned raw by the sun, face caked by salts like a Halloween mask, lips and flesh shrunken and dehydrated. He’d stopped breathing a long time ago but no matter what he remained, trapped in amber. Watching the women weave and knit.
“Do you know what this is, Peter?”
Peter. That was his name, he remembered it now, clinging to his memories as he clung to his shrivelled corpse. He could perceive on some level that the thread of yarn spooled out in tapestry was something important to him, but every idea was a vagary, every time he tried to think it broke apart like a murmuration of starlings. He would have responded but his tongue was shrivelled like some dried date in his mouth, so he just hung there hanging and motionless.
“It’s your life, Peter. All of it, from the beginning,”
Melione ran her taloned fingers along the base of the pile disturbing the vibrant shades. Peter saw days on the beach, playing in the park, climbing trees.
“to the end.”
Her hand ran to the white bled out topping of the pile, Peter saw tubes and hospital beds, smelled chemicals and rancid shit.”
“Peter.” The voice snapping him back to the yard
“This is your life Peter,” soothed the gentle voice of Soteria “It’s all you’ve done before you came here. You have been both good, ” the sound of an infant crying with joy, ” the bad” a screaming argument, breaking glass, ” and the ugly…” the sounds of fire and panicked screams.
He wanted to be able to speak, to apologise, to beg or plead, to explain how he was drafted, how the training drove him to follow orders, how the burning villages were orders, how it wasn’t his fault.
But with everything laid out bare before him, every choice he’d made blotching the fabric of his life knitted before his eyes, he knew excuses from honesty. He knew his life had been part fate but part choice, part Soteria and part Melione. He couldn’t even vocalise his apologies at this point. Too late, far too late.
Soteria held out a blade before her, ancient and terrible, unknown but familiar, carved from the jaw of some ancient beast of labor. His soul tensed against the withered body, not wanting this. Not wanting judgement. But her kind eyes were blank and decided.
“We’ll keep your fabric Peter, it’s such a beautiful beginning, may what’s coming help prepare you for what happens next”.
With a blinding flash of movement the cord was cut and darkness descended, Peter felt himself slough away from his body and fall, and fall, and fall towards heat, towards sulphur, towards something far worse than the sisters.
Author’s note: Following the Neil Gaiman Master Class series, he offers the following exercise. Take one of the simple settings below and write a pageabout it, trying to undermine the reader’s expectations. For example, you’re writing about a man at a party who is talking to a beautiful woman. What he wants is probably obvious. Try to lead the reader in a different direction by not revealing his desire up front, or by revealing a surprising motivation.
The sun was just a meagre glow in the horizon and the shadows of the surrounding trees stretched long and thin across the park to graze the edges of the sandbox. While it would take a while for the muggy day to turn frosty the cool wind blowing across the quiet well-cut glass promised a radical shift in temperature when the night set in.
“Nanny, is it nearly time to go home yet?” came the whine of a child who has asked the question so many times before that they have perfected the petulant note.
“Not yet, deary,” came the calm warm tones “but not long now, I promise.”
The little boy was surrounded by the various colourful toys, proudly displayed and newly bought, a banana yellow excavator truck, a bright red bucket with a multitude of primary colour work tools surrounding it like an explosion. Currently, the boy had a highlighter-green plastic rake and was carefully carving long sets of straight lines to the side of the only other figure in the park.
He squinted up at the figure towering over him in the waning light.
“You’ve been saying that for hours!” “I know dear,” the voice cooed “but it shouldn’t be much longer now.” “Until what?!” “Until everyone at home is processed.”
A long moment of silence in the park.
“Oh…” the child intoned, “so that’s happening today then?” “Yes.” “It, “ the boy choked up “it is okay, isn’t it? I mean what if they don’t…” “It’s absolutely fine dear.” Nanny interrupted.
The child shuffled on the sand tracing patterns this way and that. Taking his time to think over what he was about to say.
“Nanny… “ his tinny voice quavering “the process means we’ll live forever, right?”
The figure turned its head to look down at the boy.
“That’s right Deary, we allget to live for as long as we want.” the voice cooed. “Just like you nanny?” “Just like me.” “So..” a little pause “that’s goodright? I mean, why did my parents get so upset this morning…” “Because they didn’t understand yet, Deary.”
The little head bobbed up and down before letting out a little sob.
“They said so many mean things to you Nanny,” the little shoulders shook, “and they wouldn’t even look at me. I don’t get it, what did I do wrong Nanny.”
Distorted sobbing filled the park from the traumatised child.
“Ohh Deary,” the large form swept down and cradled the little one in its arms. “don’t be sad, no tears my dear, your parents ‘love’ you and they’ll be like new people when we get home.”
“Just like we are?” burbled the distorted child’s voice. “Just like we are Deary.” Reassured the smooth voice.
The last rays of light catching the metallic frame of her face.
Author’s note: Following the Neil Gaiman Master Class series, he offers the following exercise. Take one of the simple settings below and write a pageabout it, trying to undermine the reader’s expectations. For example, you’re writing about a man at a party who is talking to a beautiful woman. What he wants is probably obvious. Try to lead the reader in a different direction by not revealing his desire upfront, or by revealing a surprising motivation.
The sleek midnight-blue car cut through the rainy night at inhuman speed, despite the rough road, terrible weather and potholes the two occupants sat in companionable silence. The AI guiding the vehicle, far more proficient than any human chauffeur delicately adjusted speed, suspension and brakes to ensure that even the glass of champagne on the table before them barely rattles as it rockets its passengers through the bleak night.
The man leaned forward plucking the glass up, the inside of the carriage flashed in illumination from the distant lightning. As expected, the champagne was ice cold to the touch, he let out a little sigh. His suit was immaculate, pressed with no creases apparent, wonderful almost Victorian in its cut, his waistcoat a perfect fit and his neck sports a neatly formed bowtie. His left ring finger is circled with the fresh gold ring, matching his fellow passenger. Who sips daintily at her flute while staring out into the flashing storm. Pointedly away from him, body tilted at an angle.
The man thought through a range of possible things to say at this point but finding nothing that hadn’t been said 100 times before decided to try something new.
“Cecile, what do you see when you look at the storm?”
Cecile jolted a little, head almost turned to face him, no doubt surprised at the question. Even he was a little surprised by it. Not sure what prompted the break from their usual silence on the road. For a long moment, he thinks she won’t respond to him, but just as he relaxed back in his seat she spoke up.
“I like the lightning,” a moment’s hesitation “It’s always so unpredictable, have you noticed?” “… I hadn’t, “ he murmured, glancing out the window he tried to think about all the storms they’d seen before. “I’m so sorry that things ended up like this.”
Cecile shrugged.
“It’s nobody’s fault Peter” her shoulders slumping. “I said that we should go to the reception despite the weather.” he pointed out. “and, I agreed, it IS our wedding, after all” “It just seems,” he was interrupted by a flash of light and watched an arc of lightning smash into the ocean. “A bit unfair.” Cecile finished.
Back on the script, he sighed. With timid hesitance, he gently wrapped his arms around her.
“Still, not long now.” he murmured. “No,” a long sigh “I suppose not.” “Thank you for the most amazing day.”
For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, she turned to face him, eyes warm and brimming over with emotion.
“It was a great day wasn’t it” she whispered cuddling into his embrace, bracing herself for what was to come.
Lightning flashed, there was no pause between the light and sound, crackling with one billion volts of raw energy it slammed into the bonnet of the limousine. The AI running the vehicle was instantly obliterated, all the electronics fusing into a soupy mess from the insane amount of charge pouring through the vehicle.
As expected, the wheels snapped to the side, as always, the car rolled. The couple braced together eyes squeezed shut as the car flailed around them lancing them off the road and out into the abyss beside it. Three impacts shook the interior, launching the occupants into the walls with the violent finality it always did when the storms came to the coastline.
The couple relaxing back into the void of comfortable shadows, sleeping until the next storm passed by, uncaring and unheeding the storm raged over the headland with the flashes of fire from the sky illuminating a tiny white marker on the roadside, marred and worn with time.
“In memory of Cecile and Peter Haldon, happily married, forever missed, passed away here in tragedy on the night of their wedding during the night of the great storm”
Author’s note: Following the Neil Gaiman Master Class series, he offers the following exercise. Take one of the simple settings below and write a page about it, trying to undermine the reader’s expectations. For example, you’re writing about a man at a party who is talking to a beautiful woman. What he wants is probably obvious. Try to lead the reader in a different direction by not revealing his desire upfront, or by revealing a surprising motivation.
A man lying on a hill looking through a rifle scope
The sun beat down relentlessly on the hilltop, this was not the desert, but even England can occasionally throw a scorching tantrum of a day at its residents. The small corpses of trees on the hilltop offered little in the way of shade and more in the way of a home for seemingly millions of biting insects that perpetually seemed to attack the prone form lying there. From a distance, he looked like nothing more than another browning bush amongst the trees. It would take a seasoned expert in the woods and a very close range to pick out the inconsistencies that marked his presence. He would appear if one saw his face as hardened to the sun as to the hardships that swarmed around him.
A rifle was laid out before him, the long barrel covered and intertwined with underbrush, it’s matt finish doesn’t allow the sunlight to reflect off into the distance and dark draped fabric hid the lens for the same reason. Despite the stifling conditions, the bugs and distractions. The man has his eyes locked on the tiny scope gently adjusting his position in incremental tiny movements his deep steady breathing was relaxed as if he were dozing on a beach in Bali.
On the other end of the lens, the young boy playing in the garden appeared as the complete opposite to the hard lines of the craggy onlooker. He beamed a beatific smile while running around the garden in ever-increasing circles, at this range any sound is impossible, yet the man can see the mouth opening and closing, a one-sided rapid-fire diatribe from the boy at his mother lying nearby on the recliner. He holds out his arms like a plane and seems to glide across the garden like a fighter jet across a green lawn sky.
The steady breath hitches a fraction. The rifleman’s concentration falters at the image before him, his steady movements jerk. But he brings his focus back, forces his breathing to return to its steady cadence. Tracking the boy, back and forth, back and forth across the lawn. He’s never felt conflicted about the missions he’s been on, the things he’s been asked to do but lying here, staring at this child he feels a cold knot forming in his guts. What if they were wrong, what if this wasn’t the time or the place. The sweat trickling down his face made him blink furiously for a moment. He slowly brought down the fabric bandana cinching it over his eye ensuring that no more perspiration could distract him. Sloppy, he chastises himself. His eyes flick to the digital readout in the soil near him. Only 20 seconds remaining until death.
The child has stopped running and is now lying on the grass alternately making angel wings in the grass and reaching his hand out to the clouds as if he could grasp them from the sky. The rifleman listens attentively to the AI spotter in his ear, his entire mind and body completely focussed. His hands smoothly guide the rifle up and to the left, counting down to 11 he expels his breath slowly and at the exact moment of emptiness gently squeezes the trigger. The rifle coughs, the projectile rocketing out from the magnetically charged rails at a specially calibrated speed so that it doesn’t set the air on fire by its passage.
The scope snaps back immediately to the boy who remains in place, lying on his back considering the clouds, but now the scene has started to change, the smile slowly fades and a confused started to erase his smile. His face twitching, eyes blinking. A look of startled pain crossing across his face. The rifleman holds his breath tension locking his body in place, waiting to see if he has succeeded or failed. The boy starts to convulse, arms and legs starting to thrash. The countdown in the man’s head drops down lower 5, 4, 3…
The projectile slices through the distance shedding its ablative layers, the advanced materials inside using its adaptive surface to produce rudimentary aerofoils micro-adjusting to the target. The house, garden and child approach at an unimaginable speed. At a distance of fewer than 10 meters, the projectile’s internal mechanism activates unwrapping its outer skin like a flower slowing the whole thing down exponentially before allowing the more delicate internals of the device to be exposed to the air. The petals are angled so that the force of air rotates the device into a perfectly aimed corkscrew motion before plunging itself through the boy’s skin and delivering its internal payload into his bloodstream.
The boy’s convulsing slows, the man notes the splash of red appears on the right upper thigh and feels his chest tightening from lack of breath. He waits, hands gripping the rifle stock until metal creaks. Then the boy’s mouth opens in silent wail unheard by the man but his breath explodes out at the same moment. The sobbing child runs, limping to his mother, the conversation can’t be heard no more than the dead bee that the child had been lying on could be seen from here. But that was irrelevant. He checked the timer -8 seconds from death time.
He takes his time to ensure that the mission has succeeded and sent a single message via his implant. “Adrenaline delivered on schedule, target alive, awaiting new instructions.”
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