There are pockets of London where you can slip away from the seven and a half million souls who share the city with you and find a secluded backwater so quiet you could be the only inhabitant.  A few streets from Impresso, Megan and I reached a small, semi-enclosed square and found a seat on one of the original Victorian iron benches near the middle, beneath a depressed looking tree.  Someone had spruced the bench up with shiny black paint but it was still as uncomfortable as hell.  Megan planted the gift-wrapped box on the seat between us and turned to look at me.

‘You look good, Red’, she said.

‘You said that already.  Cut the crap, Megan!  What’s in the box?’

Megan smiled, the dimples making a brief appearance.

‘Well, it’s nice to see you, too, Red.  Missed me?’

‘Like a heart attack,’ I muttered.  ‘What’s in the box?’

Megan grinned.  ‘Same old Red.  You really know how to make a girl feel wanted.’

Then she grew serious, was all business.  She still took my breath away.  I guess you could say I’ve got it bad.  Good job I had my survival instincts to fall back on.

‘I suppose you could call it a bio bomb, Red,’ said Megan thoughtfully.  ‘I’m told that there are enough little bugs inside  this box to decimate London.  It would make the Black Death look like a summer cold.’

She looked at the shiny silver box the way you or I would look at an interesting species of butterfly.

‘Apparently, it’s got a really impressive hit rate for the size of the sample.  Or, so I’m told.’

So, OK, the survival instincts had obviously gone AWOL.  I scooted back along the bench until I hit the arm, as far away from the box as I could get without actually running.

‘Jesus, Megan!  Where the hell did you get it?’ I could hear my voice rising.  ‘And why bring it to me?  You need to get it out of London!  Get it somewhere safe.’

Megan put her head on one side as she considered this.

‘The trouble is, Red, I don’t think there is anywhere safe for a thing like this.  If the bugs get out of the flask - that’s it.  There’s no antidote.  At least, that’s what Stephen told me.’

‘Stephen?  Who the hell is Stephen?’

My voice may have risen again.  I saw a woman who’d just entered the square with a small over-groomed poodle on a pale pink lead look across at us, then turn away with a scowl.  Fat lot of good that was going to do her and her dog if Megan’s bio bomb went off.  They’d be among the first to go.  Unless the bugs only targeted humans, in which case her dog might be safe for a while but it was going to have to resurrect its wolf ancestry to survive.  I could feel part of my mind playing out this scenario as a diversion from the incomprehensible terror that the box was generating.  The poodle looked as if it might be OK nipping ankles but I didn’t see it leading a pack of feral hounds through deserted London streets.  Too much pampering had tamed the beast.  I fought to get my mind back on track.

Megan gave me the look she gives me when she knows I’m struggling to keep up.
​
‘You know, Red. Stephen.’  She sighed as I still looked blank.  ‘Stephen Mackenzie.  He’s an old friend from college.  You’ve met him, Red.   Tall, thin, wears glasses and never looks as if he knows what to do with his hands.’

OK, yes.  I had a vague memory of someone called Stephen.  He worked for some pharmaceutical firm, as far as I could remember, and definitely looked as if he didn’t get out much.  Megan had a knack for picking up stray dogs and giving them the odd titbit.  I must have met him at one of the gatherings at her flat a while ago, back when I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for, getting to know Megan.  I felt a sudden lurch in my stomach.  Maybe I, too, was one of her stray dogs, useful occasionally and meriting the odd pat on the head.  I felt my mouth turn sour at the thought.
​
‘I vaguely remember Stephen,’ I said.  ‘Science geek.  Why would he give you a bio-bomb?  What the fuck was he thinking?’

I posted the start of this on 29/12/2015 as "Opener for First Chance" & invited comments.  So far, I've had no luck with that but hey, I know you're busy.  Here's the next part and, if you have any comments you wish to share, please feel free...

I’m Will, by the way.  William Alexander Peyton to be formal.  Most people know me as Will but Megan has always called me ‘Red’, for reasons which are obvious unless I’m wearing a hat.  I’m thirty-four, around six foot one and I can handle myself in a fight.  You can probably chalk that up to long years in the school playground, learning to defend myself from evil bastards who saw my red hair as a red flag until I convinced them they’d picked a fight they couldn’t win.  My nose ended up a bit crooked but it suffered less damage than most of the ginger bashers did.  I guess I’ve got a temper to go with the hair.

Megan... well, Megan is a whole other thing.   If you saw her, you’d say she was beautiful and she is, she really is, but that’s not her defining feature.  That would be her complete and utter lack of fear.  Where you or I might hesitate, Megan jumps right in.  Now, you could say that’s a good thing - life belongs to the brave and all that.  But we hesitate for a reason.  It’s a survival skill.  A sensible amount of caution allows us to regroup, withdraw and fight another day.  At the very least, it gives us a chance to weigh up the odds.  With Megan, the odds are firmly stacked against you at the start and your main priority is to prevent her getting herself killed before she reaches her target.  Hanging on to your own skin is also a major concern.  Make no mistake - between Megan and a heat-seeking missile there’s not a whole lot of difference and God help anyone who’s around when the explosion happens.

You might say Megan is her father’s daughter.   I’ve said it myself but I’m not sure it’s the whole truth.  Eliot Chance is, without doubt, the coldest hearted bastard you are likely to meet this side of Christmas and, believe me, I’ve met a few.  He founded Chance Associates, a high-end security firm based in Mayfair and that location pretty much defines his clientele.  They are loaded.  Whatever they want, they have the means to buy it or to pay someone to get it for them.  Which is where Eliot’s firm comes in.  Protection, kidnap negotiation, blackmailing employee or abusive spouse - whatever the problem, Chance Associates can provide a solution.  For a price.  Megan has learned a lot from her father and she’s being groomed to inherit the family business.  If she survives him, that is.  And that is really my problem with Eliot Chance.  He’ll protect any deadbeat member of some billionaire’s family but he doesn’t protect his own daughter.  Just as he failed to protect his own wife.

I don’t know the details.  I guess, in his business, it pays not to advertise failure.  I heard Megan’s mother died in some botched kidnap switch when Megan was sixteen.  I didn’t know her when her mother was alive but I’m guessing that Miranda Chance’s death might have something to do with Megan’s kamikaze attitude to life.  You sure as hell can feel Death standing at Megan’s shoulder when you get involved in one of her hair-brained ventures.  Maybe she just doesn’t care if she survives or not.  My problem is - I do care.  I care a lot.  Which is why I needed to hand off my caffeine deficient commuters to another barista and scoot after Megan.

The only problem with that was Rachel, my business partner and actual boss of the coffee shop, Impresso, who had spotted Megan and was shooting me a look guaranteed to sizzle small insects.
‘Don’t you dare, Will’ she hissed, between customers.  ‘There will not be a job to come back to if you follow that evil bitch.’
Which I knew was an empty threat.  You see, I part own the coffee shop, although, I’ve got to admit, Rachel does all the serious work: ordering supplies, serving commuters from 7am to 7 pm and hiring and firing.  But she couldn’t actually fire me.  I hoped.
‘Sorry, Rache... You know how it is... I’ve got to...’

I tried a conciliatory smile which just earned me a more intense glare combined with a scowl which would have made Medusa proud.  It didn’t matter.  Whatever Megan was up to, I couldn’t leave her to it.  Those green eyes had looked more than serious.  They’d looked scared.  Which was a first.  I have never once seen Megan look frightened, even at moments when I was reduced to babbling terror.  Whatever this was about, Megan needed back up.
​
Several customers took a step back as Rachel’s glare scythed through the crowd and I could feel it burning into the small of my back as I left the coffee shop and hurried after Megan, out into the street.  I knew I was being an idiot.  I knew I was going to regret it.  But I also knew Megan was in serious trouble and I might be able to help.

You have a story to tell.  Maybe your story is already plotted out in your head with every plot point in place and every character arc mapped.  Maybe you just plan to start writing and see how things go.  Either way, you have a decision to make: where do you begin?

All stories, we are told, need a beginning, a middle and an end. It sounds simple.  Yet starting the story can be one of the most difficult decisions a writer makes.  A poor start might mean a potential reader never travels past that first sentence.  A brilliant start can hook the reader and propel them into the story, eager to know more.  The start of your story matters.  The stakes are high.

Storytellers have been struggling with this problem since stories began.  Sometimes the answer was to come up with a phrase which was repeated so often it became a cliché: “Once upon a time...” or “A long time ago...”  Neither of these tell us anything about the story to come.  They are simply ways of alerting us to the fact that a story is about to be told.  They are a call for our attention but are now so over familiar that they no longer engage us.  Unless there is a twist.

The standard opening to Star Wars gives us an interesting twist:
“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...”
The story is set in the past, which is a surprise as it concerns space ships and robots and galactic empire, all things we associate with tales of the future.  So this traditional opener is given a new life and we are hooked.

The opening to Shrek gives us a similar twist.  It starts with a book where we read the opening line  to so many fairy tales:
“Once upon a time there was a lovely princess...”
We all know how that story goes.  The hero kills the ogre and marries the princess.  But this fairy tale, we quickly learn, is told from the ogre’s point of view.  If he is the hero, the story is not going to follow the recipe that we have come to expect.  Again, our curiosity is piqued and we want to know more.  Another successful hook.

What does this tell us?  A reader does not want a predictable opening.  A reader is looking for something different, for something to make reading your story worth their time.  So your opening has to be a promise of a fascinating story to come.  Anything less is a waste of ink.
​
How to achieve this?  One method is to set up an expectation and then give it a twist, exactly like the examples above.  George Orwell’s opening to 1984 is a masterpiece at subverting our expectations:
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
We know about clocks.  We know they never strike thirteen.  We’re hooked.

J M Barrie’s opening to Peter Pan begins:
"All children, except one, grow up."
This gives the reader a double whammy.  It confounds our expectations that all children grow up and sets up questions in the reader’s mind.  Who is this child?  Why does he or she never grow up?  Openings that set up a question in the reader’s mind always work well because, if there is a question, the reader will want to read on to discover the answers.

Actually, Peter Pan’s opening is a triple whammy - it not only plants a question and messes with our expectations, it also introduces the major character.  Introducing a main character in the opening is an effective way to bond the reader to that person’s story.  C S Lewis opens The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with:
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
The author simultaneously introduces Eustace and alerts us to the fact that he is not a nice boy.  We are intrigued.  Who is he and why is an unpleasant person given prominence at the start of the story?  More questions.  More reasons to read on.

Charles Dickens’ opening to A Christmas Carol goes further, by introducing us to a character who is no longer alive:
“Marley was dead, to begin with.”
The reader not only wants to know who he is and why he is important to the story but is also being primed for the key element of the tale: the dead will return, as a ghost, to haunt the main character.  Another twist.

If you are stuck for a really great beginning to your story, you could do worse than play around with one of these ideas.
Create a twist, subvert reader expectations.
Set up a question the reader wants answering.
Introduce a main character and give the reader a reason to root for or to dislike that person.

If you can create an opening which does all three and gives a sense of imminent doom then you’ve got a zinger of an opening:
“Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.”
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club.
​
Now all you need to do is write the story to go with it.  Good luck!

​It’s the end of the first Matrix film and Neo has reached a new level of being.  Instead of seeing the manufactured ‘reality’ around him, he can see the endless lines of computer code which create that reality.  He has evolved to read the structure which underpins his reality.

We’re not Neo, nor are we living in a computer simulation (no matter what the conspiracy theorists would have us believe).  But, as writers, we must start to see the ‘code’ which underlies every successful story so that we can make use of it to improve our own writing.

By code, I do not mean computer code but the structural elements which make stories work.  For stories are not just a random series of events.  Stories have shape and purpose and meaning so that they create a convincing and ultimately satisfying alternative reality for the reader.  Without this, the reader drifts, grows bored and, inevitably, stops reading.  A writer’s worst nightmare!

To enthral and engage, a story requires elements which will reach out and grab the reader so that s/he does not want to stop reading.  Any storyteller needs an armoury of such devices and must be ready to employ them at intervals throughout the story.  But, if they are too obvious, the magic is broken.  The reader sneers and turns away.  No, like Neo’s computer code, these elements must be integrated into the story so seamlessly that an inattentive reader may not even notice they are there.  But you, the writer, must learn to recognise when and how and why these elements are employed.

What are these magical elements?  These hooks which will bind the reader to your story?  Every genre has its own particular favourites.  Unrequited love in a romance.  Who murdered X? in a crime novel.  The race against time in a thriller.  All setting up an anxiety in the reader’s mind and the desire to know how things turn out.

There are other elements, less genre specific.  A favourite across many genres is: The Reversal.  The reader is led to suppose that one thing is true and then the opposite is revealed as the truth.  Agatha Christie uses this one all the time.  Possible spoiler alert: In the interests of not spoiling things too much, I will not be specific about which books she uses these devices in but, if you don’t want to know, please hop on to the next paragraph!  Agatha writes of the sequence of murders which actually conceal one, specific murder; of the murder not done by one but many killers; of the sidekick to the detective who is actually the murderer.

But reversals are just as useful in other genres.  Jane Austen, in Pride and Prejudice, sets up a brilliant one when she makes her two protagonists dislike each other before revealing that, in fact, they are a perfect match.  This works particularly well because she is not simply fooling the reader.  She makes her characters believe that they dislike one another.  They, too, are fooled into believing one thing and then have to switch mindset when they discover that the opposite is true.  Even better, several characters (Lizzie’s own father among them) are resistant to believing the new truth.  How true to life that is.  How clever the reader is made to feel because they now have a superior insight into the truth!  If you have ever flicked back through the pages of a book to reread passages in the light of a later discovery, chances are you’ve been hooked by a clever reversal.

A ‘ticking clock’ is another element of story telling which can transcend genres.  I have already mentioned its use in a thriller but any story can be energised with a simple time critical element.  Cinderella’s midnight chimes is a classic example.  The time limit in the film High Noon is another.  Back to Pride and Prejudice and we find a ticking clock in the race to find Lydia and Wickham after their unfortunate elopement - will the couple be found before the scandal breaks?  Can they be made to marry and so save her good name?

The classic ‘ticking clock’ is the countdown we see on screen as the bomb is discovered.  In reality, bomb makers do not feel a need to add a literal ticking clock but, in film, it is now a requirement.  James Bond films depend upon it for their box office takings.  Mission Impossible even incorporated a ‘ticking clock’ into its credits with the lit fuse searing its way across the screen.  And who can forget ‘This tape will self-destruct in 10 seconds’?

American episodic TV is particularly good at demonstrating these kind of story elements which hook a viewer.  They have to be good at it because in the USA ratings are all.  My favourite reversal is in the first ever episode of Scrubs, the medical sitcom, where the nervous new medical students discover that the ‘nice’ doctor is absolutely not interested in teaching them anything.  It’s the grumpy, angry doctor who is doing his best to make them understand what they have to do and be and become if they’re going to make it as doctors.  The one they’re all terrified off turns out to be the one who cares that they succeed.

 So, the next time you think you’ll give up on writing and try a little recreational TV - look out for the ways in which the episode lures you in and keeps you watching.  And, once you’ve spotted the ‘code’, have a think about how you could use it to add that magic element of ‘must keep reading’ to your writing.  And, like Neo, you will start to manipulate your fictional reality to suit your own purposes.

​Good luck and happy writing!
 

Being a writer is an odd business.  For one thing, most of the rest of the world do not see writing as any kind of work at all.  A hobby, maybe.  Or a trivial pursuit to pass the time.  But not work.  After all, how hard can it be?  Writing is simply putting words on a page.  It does not take any kind of effort to do that.  Also, nobody is forcing the writer to write.  It is not like having a boss who expects you to turn up each day and put in the hours.  Writing is fun.  Why else would anybody do it?

How little they know!  Writing is fun.  Sometimes.  Those are the times which keep a writer going.  Because, when writing is going well everything is OK in the writer’s world.  Life is beautiful when the words flow and characters take on a life of their own.  There is no feeling in the world like it.  Unfortunately, it does not happen often.  Most of the time writing is not like that.  Most of the time writing is sheer hard slog.  Work and then some.

It turns out writing is something more than putting words on a page.  Writing is about burrowing deep into those hidden depths that most people are happy to keep hidden.  Writing can hurt.  If I want to create a damaged character in my novel, then I must seek out the damage within me.  Otherwise, my character will never come to life but sit, a cardboard cut-out, on the page.  As a writer, I must breathe a little of my own life into each character, my thoughts, my fears, my hopes.  By the end of a writing day, I feel exhausted with the effort.

Nobody makes me write, you might say.  True.  Nobody makes me write.  But something forces me to keep coming back to the page.  Who knows what?  There are days when I dread turning on my computer.  The story is going nowhere or my characters appear to have lost interest in their story.  Some days, I struggle to find a single word to write.  But I still turn up.  Try something new.  Write something, anything, in a bid to get the ideas to flow.  It feels painful.  Dispiriting and exhausting in a different way.

Writing is more than putting words on a page.  It requires effort and a great deal of thought.  At times, the writer’s brain can feel as if it has run the mental equivalent of a marathon.  At times, the writer just wants to give up and go and do something easier.  Like a proper job, where all you have to do is turn up and put in the hours.  Sometimes, writing feels like the hardest job in the world.
​
But when the characters start to live, to do unexpected things, have their own opinions, then the job is easy.  All I have to do then is write as fast as I can, try to keep up.  On those days I would not swap writing for any other job in the world.
I just wish those days came around a little more often...
 

The birch yields
As passionate wind strips delicate fronds.
Elegant.
 
The oak resists
As obdurate wind wrenches ancient limbs.
Dominant.
 
The yew endures
As renegade wind rips evergreen spikes.
Sentinel.
 
The willow sways,
Lashing tortured wind with pitiless whips.
Triumphant.

(suggested by the picture prompt for the quickfic @ www.faberacademy.co.uk on 5 February 2016)

No-one understood the genetic quirk which caused a baby to be born with rainbow skin.  At first, babies showed only patches of swirling colours on their hands or feet, but, as they grew, the rainbow shades developed in intensity and spread across most of the child’s skin.

Parents were devastated.  They were afraid their child would be shunned, pointed at, locked away.  But the rainbow children carried a gift which could not be ignored.  The rainbow colours on the outside were pale reflections of the joy they carried within.  Joy which spread happiness to anyone who saw them.  The rainbow children were special.  When you saw one, you felt your cares lift, your mood lighten.  You felt privileged to meet one, rare as they were.

Society began to buzz with happiness.  People became more caring and co-operative.  Hearts were lighter.  Troubles were easier to bear.  The number of rainbow children increased until they became commonplace.  You saw them everywhere.  People got used to the sight of rainbow skin.

Rainbow children did not see the world as others do.  They had no interest in school and no interest in work as they grew older.  They did not seek relationships or interact with others.  People began to mutter about the cost of care.  Parents were blamed.  The mutation must be somebody’s fault.

The stress of caring for a child who could never integrate exhausted parents.  Without support some committed suicide.  Neither help nor understanding was offered.

Joy was not enough.

(for the start of this story, see Phases One, Two & Three below - filed in January)
It turns out that adding puppies and kittens to the household was easy.  Adding a baby was much more difficult.  After three years of marriage we were ready but the baby was in no hurry to arrive.  The puppy grew up, the kittens became cats and  headed for middle age and the baby refused to put in an appearance.
 
New plan.
We made a doctor’s appointment and prepared to enter the wonderful world of infertility treatment.  I’m sure you don’t want to know the grisly details.  Suffice it to say that life became more complicated.  We had a timetable, which meant extensive planning, especially now my husband was earning frequent flier miles on destinations all around the world.   Still no results.
 
Tests, next.  My husband had a low sperm count which was attributed to some medication he was on.  He switched medication and optimism reined, briefly.  Still no baby.  We started to think there was some terribly obvious aspect to making a baby that everybody else knew but no-one had let us in on the secret.  Maybe it only worked on a Tuesday, if there was a full moon?
Tried that.  Still no luck.
Hmmm.
 
Back to the doctor.  Exploratory operations next.  Lucky me.  A laparoscopy so that the medical profession could see if there was an internal problem.  I have nightmares about going to the dentist so I was not keen.  But I was determined.  We scheduled the op and discovered that I had severe endometriosis.  I might never have children.
 
‘Are you freaking kidding me?’
 
They weren’t.  The good news was that this moved us from ‘might have a problem’ to ‘this needs sorting’ and our specialist took it as a personal challenge.  After some discussion, I was put on medication for six months.  The bad news was we were not allowed to risk getting pregnant while I was taking the tablets.
 Hmmm.
 
If my husband thought ‘Are you freaking kidding me’ he did not mention it to me but was massively supportive.  Turned out I had picked a good guy to marry (as if I didn’t know).  Unfortunately, the tablets gave me massively debilitating migraines.  They started at the rate of one per week and accelerated to alternate days.  Three months in I could barely function.
New plan needed.

We returned to our specialist who gave us the benefit of his considered medical advice:
‘Come off the tablets.  Make sure you do not risk becoming pregnant for one month.  Then give it your best shot and see what happens.’
It may have been couched in more medical terms but that was the gist.
 
So we did that.
 
And it worked.
 
After eight years of marriage we had a daughter, who thrived and is now married herself.  Luckily, she turned out to love cats and dogs.
But not babies.
 
Hmmm.
 
 

​(for the start of this story, see Phases One & Two below)

So now we had a puppy.  We called her Guinea, as she was golden, although next door’s children were convinced we’d named her after a guinea pig which caused a certain amount of confusion.  Not surprisingly, the cats were unimpressed.  Fortunately, the puppy was easily intimidated by two pairs of glaring green eyes and an upraised paw.  The puppy soon learned where she came in the scheme of things.  Firmly at the bottom.  An uneasy truce prevailed until we imported a third cat into our expanding menagerie.  Then things got complicated.
 
The new kitten was a little black and white tom.  We called him Gamma, naturally.  My husband put in some proviso about how we were not going to work our way through an entire Greek alphabet of cats but I didn’t take much notice.  Gamma was another long hair with a habit of pogo-ing sideways across the living room carpet which we humans found enchanting.  Even the dog was impressed.
 
Unfortunately, the resident cats had other ideas.  Having sorted out the puppy they were not about to weaken and make friends with this new threat.  Paws were raised.  Hissing ensued.  The kitten decided the dog was his only friend and took to snuggling up with her in the dog basket as a way of keeping out of range of the older cats.  The dog seemed resigned to this new state of affairs.  At least one of the felines was friendly and never tried to use her nose as target practice.  Peace, of a sort, reigned.
Hmmm.
 
The deal with the dog had involved my giving up paid work in a bid to kick-start my writing career.  My days were full.  Writing, walking the dog, cuddling cats, playing with the kitten.  A perfect lifestyle.  Unfortunately, my hormones were not fooled.  There was still no baby on the horizon and time was a-ticking away.
Old plan, resurrected.
 
‘I think we should try for a baby,’ I said to my husband one night after a very late supper.  ‘Now I’m at home all day it makes sense.’
‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ said my husband.  He said it without much conviction.  I think he was beginning to get an idea that these little notions of mine had a way of working out.  But he still gave it his best shot.
‘You’re trying to kick-start a writing career.  I’m commuting and working long days.  When would we have time to make a baby?’
Hmmm.
 
‘How about now?’ I said.
Oddly, he seemed, suddenly, quite motivated.
And I would like to say that this led to the accomplishment of Phase Three.
Unfortunately, life had other plans.
 
Hmmm.