Fire up your writing
Beginning for Work in Progress
This is the beginning of my new novel. I don't have a title for it yet. Any feedback is welcome.
Thanks!
Alicia
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My life seemed to be revolving around numbers more than usual. It was either that, or I’d just been more conscious of them. Age: twenty-five and some months. Height: five-foot-nine. Weight: one hundred and thirty-one pounds. Siblings: four. Ex-boyfriends: three. Best friends: Also, three. Roommates: one. Idiotic choices: well over twenty. Career paths: zero. Minutes until KaffeiNation closed: ten.
With ten minutes until I was able to lock the doors of the café where I worked, I poured out two cups of coffee into black ceramic mugs and carried them towards the one person left in the store. Brody Rodriguez was ex-boyfriend number two and best friend number one. I treasured the best friend status but got confused sometimes. The lines blurred easily – ten times too easily – and we’d since put up boundaries to our friendship. If we weren’t in public, we needed a chaperone. My roommate Adam was usually a good bet.
Brody was hyper-focused on his laptop, studying something that involved hypothetical matter. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t understand. The number of years Brody was in school was approximately twenty. He was goal-driven.
I envied him.
I set the mug in the space open to the left of the small laptop. He didn’t look up; his eyes were scanning the screen, most likely to make sure everything he had worked on was saved. I sat down. “Coffee?”
“You must’ve read my mind.” He stifled a yawn. “I can’t think anymore.”
“Drink up.” I followed my own suggestion, and even though it was probably my tenth cup of the day, I drank it like it was my first. Eight minutes. “The last minutes take forever.”
He nodded as he sipped the coffee. “Hey, did you want to get a bite to eat when you’re done for the night?”
This was the third night in a row he asked me to dinner, not that I minded. I was thrilled, inwardly of course. If I let on my thoughts about the matter, our relationship would have changed, and I didn’t want that to happen. After seven years, we finally figured out how to make our post-dating relationship work. Brody had broken up with me eight years ago so he could focus on school, but it took about a year for the weirdness to set in.
Thanks!
Alicia
_________________
My life seemed to be revolving around numbers more than usual. It was either that, or I’d just been more conscious of them. Age: twenty-five and some months. Height: five-foot-nine. Weight: one hundred and thirty-one pounds. Siblings: four. Ex-boyfriends: three. Best friends: Also, three. Roommates: one. Idiotic choices: well over twenty. Career paths: zero. Minutes until KaffeiNation closed: ten.
With ten minutes until I was able to lock the doors of the café where I worked, I poured out two cups of coffee into black ceramic mugs and carried them towards the one person left in the store. Brody Rodriguez was ex-boyfriend number two and best friend number one. I treasured the best friend status but got confused sometimes. The lines blurred easily – ten times too easily – and we’d since put up boundaries to our friendship. If we weren’t in public, we needed a chaperone. My roommate Adam was usually a good bet.
Brody was hyper-focused on his laptop, studying something that involved hypothetical matter. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t understand. The number of years Brody was in school was approximately twenty. He was goal-driven.
I envied him.
I set the mug in the space open to the left of the small laptop. He didn’t look up; his eyes were scanning the screen, most likely to make sure everything he had worked on was saved. I sat down. “Coffee?”
“You must’ve read my mind.” He stifled a yawn. “I can’t think anymore.”
“Drink up.” I followed my own suggestion, and even though it was probably my tenth cup of the day, I drank it like it was my first. Eight minutes. “The last minutes take forever.”
He nodded as he sipped the coffee. “Hey, did you want to get a bite to eat when you’re done for the night?”
This was the third night in a row he asked me to dinner, not that I minded. I was thrilled, inwardly of course. If I let on my thoughts about the matter, our relationship would have changed, and I didn’t want that to happen. After seven years, we finally figured out how to make our post-dating relationship work. Brody had broken up with me eight years ago so he could focus on school, but it took about a year for the weirdness to set in.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by SnowFall on -
Good start. I'm not the target audience for this one, I would guess, but I think that the numbers thing gives it some uniqueness. Is there a plan to weave the numbers thing into the rest of the book, or was it simply a way of getting things started?
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Permalink Reply by Alicia on -
Thanks. I've been weaving the numner thing throughout. So far, all the feedback I've gotten so far is that it's effective in conveying backstory without going 'blah blah blah.'
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Permalink Reply by Ashley on -
Great start. It definitely piqued my interest. It flowed well and the numbers kept it from being too info-dump-esque. For me, maybe there was one or two too many "such and such: number"s. But then again, I'm guessing all of those things were included for a reason. That was just me being nitpicky, though. Really, I'd definitely want to keep reading based on this as an opener. Great job.
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Permalink Reply by Alicia on
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Thanks! Unfortunately, this has been put on stand-still for the time being while working on revising 1st novel. Goal is to get back to this one in 2 weeks. *Fingers crossed*
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Permalink Reply by Amanda Church on -
Just stumbled onto this forum, so my comments are way after the fact, but I couldn't help replying.
I'm not sure of the genre for this piece, but I was really intrigued by it. Numbers are fascinating to me, and the use of them here just sort of pulled me in. It could probably use some tightening (which you've no doubt probably already done), but I finished it wanting to read more, and isn't that what we all strive for as writers?
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