THE KID, part 1
By Melanie Schulz
The door slammed as Seth came home, quickly running up the stairs to head straight to his room. He had considered going into the house quietly, to not draw attention to himself, but decided against it. It was so unlike his normal entrance that it would have done just the opposite, which was something he wanted to avoid at all costs; at least until he got this thing figured out.
It all began earlier that day in the most benign of settings; gym.
Usually he enjoyed gym, not that he was athletic or anything, far from it actually. He just enjoyed hanging out with his friends, making fun of people who were even clumsier than himself.
In short, Seth was A BULLY.
He had not always been one, but in recent years, he found he attracted a lot more admiration being a bully than what he actually was; the nearsighted, overweight, middle-child of the high school janitor.
But over the years acting the part had made him become what he once only pretended to be. By that point, midway through his senior year, he was well on his way to becoming a sociopath.
He had been making fun of this ONE KID; the enlarging group gathering around to observe all of the fun, grateful that today it was not them that Seth had chosen to humiliate. Seth never got physical; thankfully it had never come to that, then people would have realized that he had nothing to back up his threats.
But THIS KID was different from all the rest, or maybe other forces were at work. Whichever it was, by the end of gym class that day, Seth was no longer a bully; in fact, Seth was no longer anything of the sort.
Coming a little belatedly to this blog, and since this excerpt has no intro or explanation, I don't know what the post's intent is. Are you just sharing? If so, cool! and it's brave of you to post things publicly (hard to do for most writers).
ReplyDeleteIf you want feedback?--my main comment is that this starts off with good action as we are introduced to Seth (despite a grammar error in the first sentence: door is the subject of the sentence, so the modifying phrase after the comma has to apply to the door rather than Seth).
Perhaps the rest of the opening could be played out as action or dialogue, however, to show rather than tell about Seth and his personality. Show him being a bully, show the scene where the one kid has done whatever he had done in real time rather than as a backflash. Immediate action is always more riveting than describing it as a memory.
I AM intrigued as to what really happened with the one kid in gym class, and what caused this major change. You've started the story in the right general timeframe--the day everything changes for your main character; that's a good thing. But if you have to backflash to tell about the incident, it might be more productive to back up a bit and begin with that incident rather than after it's already over.
Well, that was longwinded. And it's only MY opinion, so feel free to exercise your writer's right and ignore what I've said. Keep writing!
Very nice!
ReplyDelete