And now, for something completely different
...from my usual fanfic fare, that is. Last year, I'd started writing a story about a woman who wanted to hit it big by becoming a stage magician. I thought I had an interesting premise so far, but I ran into trouble after I had finished writing the scene of her first major competition, as I had introduced a pair of shadowy antagonists and hadn't really planned on what to do with them. This time, I'm going to try writing something from the ground up with the same character, except make her into a competitive "magic warrior" (basically a martial artist who happens to know magic...sports in this book's world are funny like that).
This is just the prologue to the story so far, and it's a little over 2,000 words long (I don't like writing really long chapters...it takes time away from actually reading the thing.) Comments and thoughts on how I can improve this would be appreciated.
Red Specter - Prologue
It took a few minutes for Maxine McAllister to realize what a pleasant spring day it was in her home city of Sandoval. The sun shone high in the sky, obscured only by a few stray clouds, and there was just the right amount of wind to keep her cool without being oppressive. It was the perfect opportunity, she believed, to conduct a magic training session outdoors.
Maxine stood in front of the rear wall of Sandoval University, with her spell book sitting to the side next to a nearby bush. The left arm of her jacket was tattered after taking a few indirect hits from magical energy bolts earlier in the day, but she stood and faced her roommate and magical sparring partner, Doris Williams, with a gleam of confidence in her eyes.
"Are you ready, Doris?" she called out.
Doris responded by holding up her right hand and whispering inaudibly. A small ball of light appeared above her raised index finger, growing about to the size of a baseball.
"Of course I'm ready," replied Doris. "I should be the one asking you that question. Just try not to hurt yourself this time, okay?"
Maxine acknowledged Doris' sly tone with a nod, and assumed a casting stance to react to the energy bolt heading her way.
"Dissolo!" she chanted.
She raised her right hand in front of her face as the bolt sailed toward her. A thin disc of reflective light appeared in front of her for a split second, and Doris' spell collided with it and exploded into a multitude of harmless sparks. The impact forced Maxine a few inches toward the wall, but she was able to right herself after stumbling a bit.
"Not bad, Max," said Doris. "Your timing on that shot was almost perfect. It looks like your focus training is starting to pay off."
"Thanks," said Maxine. "I still have a long way to go, though. Meditating every day isn't going to help me stop a fireball to the face until I actually put it into practice, you know?"
"Want to give it another try?"
"No, I think that's enough for today."
"So, that's it? You finally get that spell to work once, and now you're just going to walk away? If I knew you were to give up so easily after one hit, I wouldn't have bothered to come out here."
Maxine picked up her book and dusted it off, turning to the page that described the "Dissolo" spell in detail. The last few times she tried using it, she threw the shield up a split-second too late, and wasn't able to tell whether or not she had successfully cast the spell without actually seeing the shield because the projectiles would hit her first. "Hold on! Who said anything about giving up? All I wanted to do was test the spell to see if it worked."
"Now you know that it does," said Doris, "let's go back out there and finish up. Just using it once isn't going to help you improve, either."
"Don't you think it would be better for us to conserve our energy for later?" asked Maxine, slamming her book shut. "We won't accomplish anything if we sling magic back and forth all day without resting."
Doris felt her stomach rumble. "Yeah, maybe we should stop," she said, checking her watch with her free hand. "It's kinda hard to train on an empty stomach."
"In that case, do you want to eat out at that pizza place again?" Maxine rifled through her wallet to check her cash on hand, while organizing her credit cards and driver's license to prevent them from getting lost. "I'll pay for it."
"No thanks. There's still plenty to eat in the apartment. Let's get rid of some of that."
Maxine and Doris left the university grounds and headed toward her blue sedan parked on the opposite side of the street. The nearby parking lot was sparsely populated, since a majority of the students had gone out to entertain themselves for the weekend, and even though Maxine was a University alumna visiting one of her friends, she was not allowed to utilize the space until she put on the "highly prized commemorative Sandoval Alumni Association license plate frame" she received shortly after graduation. She believed the whole idea of extra privileges for graduates to be silly, so she decided to park as close as she could to the school without actually putting her car in the lot. She also liked the mild exercise she got from the added distance, but Doris often chided Maxine for making her walk that far to the car when they could have gotten out a lot quicker the other way.
Once the ladies settled in and put on their seat belts, Doris turned on the car radio and set it to one of her favorite hard rock stations, tuning in during the middle of a blaring guitar solo. She saw Maxine twitching next to her and reached for the volume knob to quiet things down, not wanting her friend to get the two of them in an accident. They sat in the car listening to a handful of interchangeable rock tunes, occasionally singing along to the lyrics and laughing at the disc jockey chatter. In the time it took to listen to a block of five songs, they had arrived at their apartment on the corner of Woodbury Street and Pinchot Avenue. An elderly man watched from his second-story window as the duo pulled into their parking space, and waved to them as they got out of their car. "Good afternoon, ladies," he said.
"Mr. Lyons?" Maxine peered up at the man's window, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. "What are you still doing here? Aren't you supposed to work at the store today?"
"Yeah," said Mr. Lyons, "but my grandson's ill and Marlene needed someone to watch over him for the day while she's out."
"We're just stopping by to get something to eat," said Doris, "but is it all right if we come up to visit?"
The old man waved at them again. "Sure. My door's always open to you two."
"Great. Thanks!"
Maxine and Doris entered the apartment lobby. Doris removed a small key tagged with the number "104" and opened one of the mailboxes, removing a pair of letters addressed to each of them. "Looks like my mother finally got those pictures I sent her a few days ago," she said. "Who sent your letter, Max?"
Maxine took a closer look at her envelope, as the addressee's name was displayed in hard-to-read cursive writing. "It looks like this came from a woman named Vanessa Lindsay."
"No way! The Vanessa Lindsay? The one they call 'The Sapphire Dreamer of the Five Cities'?"
"Yeah, that's her, all right."
"Quick! Open it. I want to see what the letter says."
"Not right now," said Maxine. "Let's go into our room first. I want to keep this a secret from the neighbors. You know how talkative Josh can get."
Doris pulled out a larger key and headed toward room 104, the second door on the right side of the hallway. She opened the door slowly and cleanly, trying to make as little noise as possible. The girls hung their jackets next to each other on a row of hooks next to the door, and then searched the refrigerator for food to eat. There was enough lunch meat for them to prepare sandwiches, but Doris pushed aside a pack of sliced ham to reach for a half-eaten box of assorted chicken parts. "Is it all right if I finish the rest of this?" she asked.
Maxine picked up a jar of mayonnaise on the shelf below the one where Doris was looking, and sat it aside while she grabbed the sliced ham and a head of lettuce. "Knock yourself out."
She and Doris sat down next to each other on the table, opening their respective letters with one of the kitchen knives sitting in the center. Doris read hers silently and folded it up, making a note to herself to send another letter to her mother at the end of the day. She took a small bite from one of the drumsticks, and while it still tasted fresh to her, she had trouble swallowing it as it was way too cold, so she went to heat up the rest of the chicken in the microwave for a minute while Maxine prepared her sandwich.
"So, what does yours say, Max?" asked Doris. "I'm dying to know."
Maxine skimmed over Vanessa's letter while she waited for Doris to sit down. There wasn't much content to the letter, as Vanessa was known for her belief in brevity, and preferred to get straight to the point during public interviews. "It looks like my application's been accepted," she said, trying to hide her excitement.
Doris, on the other hand, was not quite as calm. "Really? That's great!" she said, holding her half-eaten drumstick in her hand and waving it around. "Now, you'll actually get the chance to use those magic skills of yours against real people. You'll even get your face on TV...and maybe even an endorsement deal or two. We could use that money to get ourselves a new house."
"Well, I haven't earned the job just yet. I still have to go downtown for an interview tomorrow and try out for a position. There are likely to be a lot of people there, so I don't know whether or not I'll be selected."
"As much as you've been practicing, you should be able to get in without a problem."
Maxine took a big bite out of her sandwich, and then wiped her mouth with a paper towel after realizing that she may have used a little too much mayonnaise.
"Don't you worry," said Doris. "If you need any assistance in this whatsoever, you know you can come to me."
"Thanks, but I'm pretty sure I can handle this on my own."
Doris stared at Maxine, watching her roommate fidget with her hair while trying not to frown. "Maxine...how long have we known each other now? Three...four...five years?"
"Yeah," said Maxine. "What's your point?"
"I know you like living on your own and not having your parents lording over you, but what you've just signed up for isn't something you can do solo. It's a lot harder than you might think. Those people who compete out there have coordinators, trainers, bodyguards - basically a group of people to look out for their well-being. If they tried going it alone, they wouldn't survive long enough to get through a full season."
"I don't really have much of a choice in the matter at the moment. I barely make enough money to cover the rent for this apartment. Where am I going to find enough money to hire all those people?"
"You don't get all that stuff right off the bat, Max. They might provide a trainer to explain the rules, but we'll likely have to find a place of our own for us to work on our skills."
Maxine groaned. "Do you think the university will still let us use their training facilities?"
"Doubtful," said Doris. As her chicken legs disappeared one by one, she was tempted to ask Maxine to take her back out to get some more. "If you do get the job and start going back to the university to train, then every magic warrior will want to go there. It's best if we don't bug them about their space for the time being."
There was a small addendum to Maxine's letter: "Please arrive at Archer Stadium by 10:30 Sunday morning. Not a second later." On the back of the letter was a small road map detailing how to get downtown to reach the stadium. The quickest path Maxine and Doris would have to take was Highway 34, a route they often traveled to visit their parents during the holiday, and which was notorious for its heavy traffic during those times. They dreaded knowing that they'd have to go down that road again the next day.
"We should probably set out early tomorrow," said Maxine. "If we pull that off, we might be able to impress the coordinators. I just hope we don't get stuck in traffic again like we did last time."
As Doris went to dispose of her bucket of chicken, Maxine put down her sandwich and opened her spell book again, looking over her spells again so that they were fresh in her mind when she went to Archer stadium.
"You're still reading that?" Doris asked sardonically.
Maxine nodded, and turned to one of the pages in the back of the book where the more advanced spells were described. She hadn't actually gone that far in the book, preferring to study the easier-to-learn techniques at the beginning that could be used relatively quickly. If she could at least memorize one of the more complex techniques, she figured she would stand a better chance of getting selected.
Doris didn't know exactly what Mr. Lyons did on a daily basis, having only visited his room once or twice in the past month, but she was anxious to sit down and chat with him.
"Come on!" she said. "You've got all day to read that thing. Let's see what's going on upstairs."
This is just the prologue to the story so far, and it's a little over 2,000 words long (I don't like writing really long chapters...it takes time away from actually reading the thing.) Comments and thoughts on how I can improve this would be appreciated.
Red Specter - Prologue
It took a few minutes for Maxine McAllister to realize what a pleasant spring day it was in her home city of Sandoval. The sun shone high in the sky, obscured only by a few stray clouds, and there was just the right amount of wind to keep her cool without being oppressive. It was the perfect opportunity, she believed, to conduct a magic training session outdoors.
Maxine stood in front of the rear wall of Sandoval University, with her spell book sitting to the side next to a nearby bush. The left arm of her jacket was tattered after taking a few indirect hits from magical energy bolts earlier in the day, but she stood and faced her roommate and magical sparring partner, Doris Williams, with a gleam of confidence in her eyes.
"Are you ready, Doris?" she called out.
Doris responded by holding up her right hand and whispering inaudibly. A small ball of light appeared above her raised index finger, growing about to the size of a baseball.
"Of course I'm ready," replied Doris. "I should be the one asking you that question. Just try not to hurt yourself this time, okay?"
Maxine acknowledged Doris' sly tone with a nod, and assumed a casting stance to react to the energy bolt heading her way.
"Dissolo!" she chanted.
She raised her right hand in front of her face as the bolt sailed toward her. A thin disc of reflective light appeared in front of her for a split second, and Doris' spell collided with it and exploded into a multitude of harmless sparks. The impact forced Maxine a few inches toward the wall, but she was able to right herself after stumbling a bit.
"Not bad, Max," said Doris. "Your timing on that shot was almost perfect. It looks like your focus training is starting to pay off."
"Thanks," said Maxine. "I still have a long way to go, though. Meditating every day isn't going to help me stop a fireball to the face until I actually put it into practice, you know?"
"Want to give it another try?"
"No, I think that's enough for today."
"So, that's it? You finally get that spell to work once, and now you're just going to walk away? If I knew you were to give up so easily after one hit, I wouldn't have bothered to come out here."
Maxine picked up her book and dusted it off, turning to the page that described the "Dissolo" spell in detail. The last few times she tried using it, she threw the shield up a split-second too late, and wasn't able to tell whether or not she had successfully cast the spell without actually seeing the shield because the projectiles would hit her first. "Hold on! Who said anything about giving up? All I wanted to do was test the spell to see if it worked."
"Now you know that it does," said Doris, "let's go back out there and finish up. Just using it once isn't going to help you improve, either."
"Don't you think it would be better for us to conserve our energy for later?" asked Maxine, slamming her book shut. "We won't accomplish anything if we sling magic back and forth all day without resting."
Doris felt her stomach rumble. "Yeah, maybe we should stop," she said, checking her watch with her free hand. "It's kinda hard to train on an empty stomach."
"In that case, do you want to eat out at that pizza place again?" Maxine rifled through her wallet to check her cash on hand, while organizing her credit cards and driver's license to prevent them from getting lost. "I'll pay for it."
"No thanks. There's still plenty to eat in the apartment. Let's get rid of some of that."
Maxine and Doris left the university grounds and headed toward her blue sedan parked on the opposite side of the street. The nearby parking lot was sparsely populated, since a majority of the students had gone out to entertain themselves for the weekend, and even though Maxine was a University alumna visiting one of her friends, she was not allowed to utilize the space until she put on the "highly prized commemorative Sandoval Alumni Association license plate frame" she received shortly after graduation. She believed the whole idea of extra privileges for graduates to be silly, so she decided to park as close as she could to the school without actually putting her car in the lot. She also liked the mild exercise she got from the added distance, but Doris often chided Maxine for making her walk that far to the car when they could have gotten out a lot quicker the other way.
Once the ladies settled in and put on their seat belts, Doris turned on the car radio and set it to one of her favorite hard rock stations, tuning in during the middle of a blaring guitar solo. She saw Maxine twitching next to her and reached for the volume knob to quiet things down, not wanting her friend to get the two of them in an accident. They sat in the car listening to a handful of interchangeable rock tunes, occasionally singing along to the lyrics and laughing at the disc jockey chatter. In the time it took to listen to a block of five songs, they had arrived at their apartment on the corner of Woodbury Street and Pinchot Avenue. An elderly man watched from his second-story window as the duo pulled into their parking space, and waved to them as they got out of their car. "Good afternoon, ladies," he said.
"Mr. Lyons?" Maxine peered up at the man's window, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. "What are you still doing here? Aren't you supposed to work at the store today?"
"Yeah," said Mr. Lyons, "but my grandson's ill and Marlene needed someone to watch over him for the day while she's out."
"We're just stopping by to get something to eat," said Doris, "but is it all right if we come up to visit?"
The old man waved at them again. "Sure. My door's always open to you two."
"Great. Thanks!"
Maxine and Doris entered the apartment lobby. Doris removed a small key tagged with the number "104" and opened one of the mailboxes, removing a pair of letters addressed to each of them. "Looks like my mother finally got those pictures I sent her a few days ago," she said. "Who sent your letter, Max?"
Maxine took a closer look at her envelope, as the addressee's name was displayed in hard-to-read cursive writing. "It looks like this came from a woman named Vanessa Lindsay."
"No way! The Vanessa Lindsay? The one they call 'The Sapphire Dreamer of the Five Cities'?"
"Yeah, that's her, all right."
"Quick! Open it. I want to see what the letter says."
"Not right now," said Maxine. "Let's go into our room first. I want to keep this a secret from the neighbors. You know how talkative Josh can get."
Doris pulled out a larger key and headed toward room 104, the second door on the right side of the hallway. She opened the door slowly and cleanly, trying to make as little noise as possible. The girls hung their jackets next to each other on a row of hooks next to the door, and then searched the refrigerator for food to eat. There was enough lunch meat for them to prepare sandwiches, but Doris pushed aside a pack of sliced ham to reach for a half-eaten box of assorted chicken parts. "Is it all right if I finish the rest of this?" she asked.
Maxine picked up a jar of mayonnaise on the shelf below the one where Doris was looking, and sat it aside while she grabbed the sliced ham and a head of lettuce. "Knock yourself out."
She and Doris sat down next to each other on the table, opening their respective letters with one of the kitchen knives sitting in the center. Doris read hers silently and folded it up, making a note to herself to send another letter to her mother at the end of the day. She took a small bite from one of the drumsticks, and while it still tasted fresh to her, she had trouble swallowing it as it was way too cold, so she went to heat up the rest of the chicken in the microwave for a minute while Maxine prepared her sandwich.
"So, what does yours say, Max?" asked Doris. "I'm dying to know."
Maxine skimmed over Vanessa's letter while she waited for Doris to sit down. There wasn't much content to the letter, as Vanessa was known for her belief in brevity, and preferred to get straight to the point during public interviews. "It looks like my application's been accepted," she said, trying to hide her excitement.
Doris, on the other hand, was not quite as calm. "Really? That's great!" she said, holding her half-eaten drumstick in her hand and waving it around. "Now, you'll actually get the chance to use those magic skills of yours against real people. You'll even get your face on TV...and maybe even an endorsement deal or two. We could use that money to get ourselves a new house."
"Well, I haven't earned the job just yet. I still have to go downtown for an interview tomorrow and try out for a position. There are likely to be a lot of people there, so I don't know whether or not I'll be selected."
"As much as you've been practicing, you should be able to get in without a problem."
Maxine took a big bite out of her sandwich, and then wiped her mouth with a paper towel after realizing that she may have used a little too much mayonnaise.
"Don't you worry," said Doris. "If you need any assistance in this whatsoever, you know you can come to me."
"Thanks, but I'm pretty sure I can handle this on my own."
Doris stared at Maxine, watching her roommate fidget with her hair while trying not to frown. "Maxine...how long have we known each other now? Three...four...five years?"
"Yeah," said Maxine. "What's your point?"
"I know you like living on your own and not having your parents lording over you, but what you've just signed up for isn't something you can do solo. It's a lot harder than you might think. Those people who compete out there have coordinators, trainers, bodyguards - basically a group of people to look out for their well-being. If they tried going it alone, they wouldn't survive long enough to get through a full season."
"I don't really have much of a choice in the matter at the moment. I barely make enough money to cover the rent for this apartment. Where am I going to find enough money to hire all those people?"
"You don't get all that stuff right off the bat, Max. They might provide a trainer to explain the rules, but we'll likely have to find a place of our own for us to work on our skills."
Maxine groaned. "Do you think the university will still let us use their training facilities?"
"Doubtful," said Doris. As her chicken legs disappeared one by one, she was tempted to ask Maxine to take her back out to get some more. "If you do get the job and start going back to the university to train, then every magic warrior will want to go there. It's best if we don't bug them about their space for the time being."
There was a small addendum to Maxine's letter: "Please arrive at Archer Stadium by 10:30 Sunday morning. Not a second later." On the back of the letter was a small road map detailing how to get downtown to reach the stadium. The quickest path Maxine and Doris would have to take was Highway 34, a route they often traveled to visit their parents during the holiday, and which was notorious for its heavy traffic during those times. They dreaded knowing that they'd have to go down that road again the next day.
"We should probably set out early tomorrow," said Maxine. "If we pull that off, we might be able to impress the coordinators. I just hope we don't get stuck in traffic again like we did last time."
As Doris went to dispose of her bucket of chicken, Maxine put down her sandwich and opened her spell book again, looking over her spells again so that they were fresh in her mind when she went to Archer stadium.
"You're still reading that?" Doris asked sardonically.
Maxine nodded, and turned to one of the pages in the back of the book where the more advanced spells were described. She hadn't actually gone that far in the book, preferring to study the easier-to-learn techniques at the beginning that could be used relatively quickly. If she could at least memorize one of the more complex techniques, she figured she would stand a better chance of getting selected.
Doris didn't know exactly what Mr. Lyons did on a daily basis, having only visited his room once or twice in the past month, but she was anxious to sit down and chat with him.
"Come on!" she said. "You've got all day to read that thing. Let's see what's going on upstairs."