A Brief History of a Story: The Gift 3.0
Sep. 17th, 2012 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frogs_of_warI had read in a book about writing (I can't remember which, only that the writer was male) that people don't remember whether a story is first or third person once they finish reading it and he gave an example. Many time I can't either, so after I read that I thought of first and third as having the same weight, but a few days ago I followed a link to Wired for Story, a site about a book on how humans' brains are wired and how a writer can give the most punch (I think, I'm the fifth hold on the library's copy). I spent the evening reading the posts, one of which told of a study where college students read one of two versions of a story (first and third person) and then had their brains scanned as they talked about the story. The people who had read the first person (but not third) story's brain lit up as if they had actually experienced the things in the story.
I was fascinated by this and wondered if I could make The Gift better by changing the person. I did and I like it so much better. A few more words gave three people greater personalities. Maybe I just write better in first person. You can judge for yourself:
The Gift 2.0 (Working title His Wolfman)
Title: The Gift 3.0 (Working title My Wolfman)
Status: Complete
Genre: supernatural, family
Rating: PG
Length: 2.4k
Summary: Balendin knows his family needs food and the only ones that can save them want a gift in return. He will be that gift.
Uncle Jorkin stops pacing in front of where I huddle with my cousins under blankets. “Let’s give Balendin.”
I hold my breath. I knew I would be the first choice, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to go live with strangers.
“No, we can’t. He is my only living child.” Ma turns from the fire, talking about me as if I wasn’t here like always. “Would you have the forest take him from me too?”
She blames the forest for the landslide that killed Pa and Uncle Ganix even though they were warned to stay away from that particular hill, the illness that took my younger brothers although the people that brought it came over the mountains not through the forest, and the odd spirit that overcame Zavion, my older brother, that led him to spend more and more time in the forest until one day he didn’t come home. Wherever he is, I hope he’s happier than he was with us.
Since Zavion disappeared Ma hasn’t allowed me near the tree line. I comply, but each year, each season that gets harder. I love standing in the stillness of a forest glade on a winter’s day, watching the plants wake up in the spring, laying in the cool shade of the giant trees on a hot summer afternoon, and gathering the colorful autumn leaves in a pile and jumping in. Or I did years ago when I was last allowed inside.
“If not him, then who?” Uncle Jorkin lifts the baby off my lap and passes her to Aunt Amaya. She was keeping my lap warm. I shiver and pull up the blanket. My aunts call their children to them. I feel my aunts’ rejection hot in my chest, but someone must be given and as much as my family loves me, which I do not doubt, my aunts are relived that the gift isn’t going to be one of their children.
But Nana hides her tears against Poppa’s shoulder and he holds her close. We all belong to them.
The winter had been long and hard. Even chubby little Elixa has lost her round cheeks. Nana is skin and bones because she offers more than half of her small portions to the little ones crying from empty bellies. I am not so strong willed and eat every bit of my share, despite the sad little eyes that watch every bite. My cousins get their share, but no one’s share is ever enough. If we don’t get help soon we will have to butcher the milk cow, which will only delay the day we run totally out of food.
Uncle Jorkin and Cousin Erlea go into the woods everyday looking for things to eat, but food is scarce. After a full day hunt, many times, they hadn’t gather enough for two people, let alone all fourteen of us, but last week they returned with half a deer and the meat lasted us until yesterday with the help of the wild turnips they found at the same time. Uncle Jorkin had said they were a gift. Nana, Ma, and my aunts assumed a gift from the gods and prayed their thanks, but what if the gift was help from more earthly beings?
“But it can’t be him,” Ma pleads. “It can’t be my Balendin. He is my precious little boy.”
I outgrew Ma over the summer, but I will never grow up in her heart.
“If we do nothing, he will die,” Uncle Jorkin looks over his wife and children, “we will all die before winter is over. This way, he might have a chance to survive.”
Ma lifts her chin. “If you think that, send one of your own children. Erlea is young and strong. She would make a fine wife for the wolfmen. Leave my son out of this.”
Erlea meets my eye across the room and then turns away. The choice was really always her or me as the two oldest of the grandchildren.
“Erlea is betrothed, as you well know, and will be married in the spring.”
Her betrothed is a good man. Before the snow got too deep he would trek out to our farm once a week to bring flour or rabbits or whatever his family could spare.
“If the spring ever comes. Send one of your other daughters then. You cannot send my son. Would you deny our father his only grandson?”
Back when I was one of four, Ma used to lord her sons over her brothers’ daughters. Maybe loosing me as well is punishment for her pride.
“I may have a son yet. Only time will tell. Or my daughters will have sons. Someone has to go. The wolfmen know the woods and the weather. If the Dolf says we will not survive until spring without their help, I believe him. If your husband and Ganix had listened to the Dolf, they might yet be alive.” Now that was an argument Ma and Uncle Jorkin had had a million times. He raised his hand and cut her off when she opened her mouth. “Someone needs to go. Will you go instead?”
“Of course not.” Ma crossed her arms. “I will not be taken by a wolf. I would kill myself first.”
A howl rises up outside. The wolfmen are back. Ma reaches for me, but Uncle Jorkin throws open the door. “Balendin, come.”
I wrap the blanket more tightly around me and step onto the porch.
The moon shines so brightly on the snow that the night looks like day. A score of wolfmen stand in the yard, each about an arm’s length apart. Snow drifts rises to the hips of the men in back, but only to the knees of the big, handsome man not far from the porch’s bottom step. The huge snowflakes settle lightly on their shoulders, but where could the wolfmen have been for the last hour to be that free of the ever-present white stuff?
Each wears clothing of fur and leather with a huge wolf pelt, including the head, as a cloak. Legend says the wolfmen are brothers to wolves, but why would anyone wear his brother’s skin? Did wolves sacrifice themselves to become the wolfmen’s coats?
The wolfmen had come before. Once early that very evening, but Ma is so scared of the forest that she insists I hide whenever its inhabitants appear, so I’ve never seen them before. They are as beautiful and mysterious and extra-ordinary as I hoped, and they cast strange shadows.
I follow Uncle Jorkin down to the lowest step not covered in snow. Here I am eye to eye with the huge wolfman in front. He is more impressive up close. His cheeks wear a light layer of stubble, but most of the wolfmen, like the men in the village wear beards. Does he shave and his hair grows quickly or does he keep it in the gap between clean shaven and beard? I like that idea. It makes him more mysterious. The hair on his head falls in silky waves to his shoulders. Does he live in a place warm enough to wash even in this weather? No one in the house has bathed since the snows came because the womenfolk fear that we won’t dry thoroughly and be as frozen as the water bucket come morning.
But this man looks unafraid of anything.
His hair shares the greys of his wolf pelt cloak, but even with that he looks younger than Uncle Jorkin. Only how could one tell with the wolfmen? Maybe they didn’t wrinkle around the eyes. And this one has such warm, brown eyes. If I put out my hand, could I touch him? Is he as warm as he looks?
Uncle Jorkin puts his hand in my shoulder. “Dolf Kenneally, this is the one.”
“No!” Ma screams. “He’s not! Don’t take him! He’s too young!”
“Is he willing?” Dolf Kenneally’s craggy voice courses through the air and into my bones. I have to concentrate to breath.
“No!” The stairs shake with Ma’s hurried steps.
“Yes.” Uncle Jorkin claps me on the shoulder. “Good luck, Balendin. We will keep you in our thoughts and prayers.”
I take a step into the snow. I nearly slip and the wolfman puts out his hand, but doen’t touch me. I look again into those warm brown eyes that whisper promises of warm toes and a full belly, things I hadn’t experienced in months. I take another step and one more to the ground. The wolfman sinks to his knees in such a graceful, fluid motion at I would have believed that he hadn’t moved at all except his eyes are again level with mine.
I stopped right in front of him. I wanted to touch. Is that all right? What does being a gift to the wolfmen mean? Or am I a trade? The Dolf will make sure my family eats. I have to believe that. I take a deep breath and straighten my shoulders. I smell snow and wet dirt and the heavy tang of my unwashed blanket, but where is the tantalizing scent coming from? Is it the wolfmen?
I wanted to lean forward, to smell and touch and taste, but I hold back. I didn’t want to embarrass my Uncle or Ma or, worse, the Dolf. What if he decides he doesn’t want me? Erlea would not be happy away from the ones she loves. The smell that’s making me crazy comes from Dolf Kenneally himself. I breathe in deeply, hoping for a better whiff. The Dolf grins, warm and inviting, and I ball my hands into fists to keep from tasting his lips.
I take the last step until my toes touched the Dolf’s knees. I don’t care. I have to breath in his scent. Maybe my willingness to get close to him, to touch him, will soothe my family’s worries. I will be all right as long as I am with him.
I blush at the thought, and hide my red face in the edge of his collar, warm and dry despite the cold air and snow. Kenneally bends his head and I feel the warmth of his breath before he rubs his nose along my neck. I want to throw off my blanket and be free of my heavy clothing. I have never felt so warm. My breath is steam, but it should be fire. Even the snow melting into my shoes doesn’t cool me down. A warm voice, like Dolf Kenneally’s but also not, fills my head. “You are willing.”
I look up. Did the Dolf speak without his mouth?
The wolfmen’s howls fill the air, Ma shriek higher and louder than even when Pa died as Uncle Jorkin yelled, “Stop! Wait!”
A hot breath hits my neck just before sharp teeth take the world from me.
~
I wake in fur, on fur, under fur. I have never been so warm. My wolfman is talking, but his words bypass my ears and I hear them in my body, in my head, in my heart. I rubbed one ear, or try, but my fingers don’t work and my ear is in the wrong place. No, not wrong. Just a different place. And some of the fur is mine, on my face, my arm. I burrow out of the covers. My nose gets out before my eyes. I smelled my wolfman and fresh meat.
My stomach growls. I shoved my face into the bowl of chopped meat and organs just beyond the furs. I’ve never eaten meat raw and I only eat organs when I’ll starve otherwise, but they taste good right now. I swallow chunks whole. I’ll choke if I don’t slow down, but I can’t stop. Maybe food just tastes better when no small ones stare sad-eyed at my plate. I eat the last bite and then lick the bowl with my long tongue.
I lick around his mouth. My teeth are sharp and my snout long. And the big, majestic wolf by the fire is my wolfman, Dolf Kenneally. The other wolf is unimportant.
I do belong to the Dolf now, don’t I? The furs in the bed smell like Kenneally, so the house has to be his. The other wolf is the guest. But he isn’t here to take me away, is he? He better not be.
I leap out of the bed and promptly fall over my too big feet. I straightened up. Tempting scents filled the house, but none so enticing as my wolf. My feet don’t want to cooperate and my tail keeps knocking me off balance, but finally I lay my head beside my wolf’s front paw. Kenneally licks my ear and neck and I shiver with pleasure. I rub my face against Kenneally’s — my wolf’s — chest.
“My little one,” Dolf Kenneally says in that voice that is as warm as his eyes.
I flop over and exposed my belly, which felts right despite the guest wolf being nearby. My wolf makes me feel safe. I could lie there all night.
“Only you would set out to find a mate and return with a half grown pup,” says the other wolf in a voice like coal.
“I found both. Maybe.” Dolf Kenneally rubs his nose against my belly. “A youngling will adjust better than an adult. Don’t forget the trouble Phelan’s mate caused him. She couldn’t learn to be happy.”
“You might be right, but isn’t this one male?” He leans toward me.
I roll over to protect my belly, but before I can Dolf Kenneally jumps to his feet, raises his tail, and bares his teeth. The other wolf backs away and averts his head.
Dolf Kenneally is beautiful, majestic, and strong. I feel protected rather than babied. Kenneally stands over me because he wants to, not because I can’t take care of myself. Ma could take lessons from him.
Dolf Kenneally sits back down. I nuzzle him. He nuzzles back.
“But,” said the other wolf, “I am right to believe this one is male? Won’t you need cubs?”
My wolf nibbles my ear. “When he is older, I will get him with cubs and once I do, I will never again need to prove my power.”
I was fascinated by this and wondered if I could make The Gift better by changing the person. I did and I like it so much better. A few more words gave three people greater personalities. Maybe I just write better in first person. You can judge for yourself:
The Gift 2.0 (Working title His Wolfman)
Title: The Gift 3.0 (Working title My Wolfman)
Status: Complete
Genre: supernatural, family
Rating: PG
Length: 2.4k
Summary: Balendin knows his family needs food and the only ones that can save them want a gift in return. He will be that gift.
Uncle Jorkin stops pacing in front of where I huddle with my cousins under blankets. “Let’s give Balendin.”
I hold my breath. I knew I would be the first choice, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to go live with strangers.
“No, we can’t. He is my only living child.” Ma turns from the fire, talking about me as if I wasn’t here like always. “Would you have the forest take him from me too?”
She blames the forest for the landslide that killed Pa and Uncle Ganix even though they were warned to stay away from that particular hill, the illness that took my younger brothers although the people that brought it came over the mountains not through the forest, and the odd spirit that overcame Zavion, my older brother, that led him to spend more and more time in the forest until one day he didn’t come home. Wherever he is, I hope he’s happier than he was with us.
Since Zavion disappeared Ma hasn’t allowed me near the tree line. I comply, but each year, each season that gets harder. I love standing in the stillness of a forest glade on a winter’s day, watching the plants wake up in the spring, laying in the cool shade of the giant trees on a hot summer afternoon, and gathering the colorful autumn leaves in a pile and jumping in. Or I did years ago when I was last allowed inside.
“If not him, then who?” Uncle Jorkin lifts the baby off my lap and passes her to Aunt Amaya. She was keeping my lap warm. I shiver and pull up the blanket. My aunts call their children to them. I feel my aunts’ rejection hot in my chest, but someone must be given and as much as my family loves me, which I do not doubt, my aunts are relived that the gift isn’t going to be one of their children.
But Nana hides her tears against Poppa’s shoulder and he holds her close. We all belong to them.
The winter had been long and hard. Even chubby little Elixa has lost her round cheeks. Nana is skin and bones because she offers more than half of her small portions to the little ones crying from empty bellies. I am not so strong willed and eat every bit of my share, despite the sad little eyes that watch every bite. My cousins get their share, but no one’s share is ever enough. If we don’t get help soon we will have to butcher the milk cow, which will only delay the day we run totally out of food.
Uncle Jorkin and Cousin Erlea go into the woods everyday looking for things to eat, but food is scarce. After a full day hunt, many times, they hadn’t gather enough for two people, let alone all fourteen of us, but last week they returned with half a deer and the meat lasted us until yesterday with the help of the wild turnips they found at the same time. Uncle Jorkin had said they were a gift. Nana, Ma, and my aunts assumed a gift from the gods and prayed their thanks, but what if the gift was help from more earthly beings?
“But it can’t be him,” Ma pleads. “It can’t be my Balendin. He is my precious little boy.”
I outgrew Ma over the summer, but I will never grow up in her heart.
“If we do nothing, he will die,” Uncle Jorkin looks over his wife and children, “we will all die before winter is over. This way, he might have a chance to survive.”
Ma lifts her chin. “If you think that, send one of your own children. Erlea is young and strong. She would make a fine wife for the wolfmen. Leave my son out of this.”
Erlea meets my eye across the room and then turns away. The choice was really always her or me as the two oldest of the grandchildren.
“Erlea is betrothed, as you well know, and will be married in the spring.”
Her betrothed is a good man. Before the snow got too deep he would trek out to our farm once a week to bring flour or rabbits or whatever his family could spare.
“If the spring ever comes. Send one of your other daughters then. You cannot send my son. Would you deny our father his only grandson?”
Back when I was one of four, Ma used to lord her sons over her brothers’ daughters. Maybe loosing me as well is punishment for her pride.
“I may have a son yet. Only time will tell. Or my daughters will have sons. Someone has to go. The wolfmen know the woods and the weather. If the Dolf says we will not survive until spring without their help, I believe him. If your husband and Ganix had listened to the Dolf, they might yet be alive.” Now that was an argument Ma and Uncle Jorkin had had a million times. He raised his hand and cut her off when she opened her mouth. “Someone needs to go. Will you go instead?”
“Of course not.” Ma crossed her arms. “I will not be taken by a wolf. I would kill myself first.”
A howl rises up outside. The wolfmen are back. Ma reaches for me, but Uncle Jorkin throws open the door. “Balendin, come.”
I wrap the blanket more tightly around me and step onto the porch.
The moon shines so brightly on the snow that the night looks like day. A score of wolfmen stand in the yard, each about an arm’s length apart. Snow drifts rises to the hips of the men in back, but only to the knees of the big, handsome man not far from the porch’s bottom step. The huge snowflakes settle lightly on their shoulders, but where could the wolfmen have been for the last hour to be that free of the ever-present white stuff?
Each wears clothing of fur and leather with a huge wolf pelt, including the head, as a cloak. Legend says the wolfmen are brothers to wolves, but why would anyone wear his brother’s skin? Did wolves sacrifice themselves to become the wolfmen’s coats?
The wolfmen had come before. Once early that very evening, but Ma is so scared of the forest that she insists I hide whenever its inhabitants appear, so I’ve never seen them before. They are as beautiful and mysterious and extra-ordinary as I hoped, and they cast strange shadows.
I follow Uncle Jorkin down to the lowest step not covered in snow. Here I am eye to eye with the huge wolfman in front. He is more impressive up close. His cheeks wear a light layer of stubble, but most of the wolfmen, like the men in the village wear beards. Does he shave and his hair grows quickly or does he keep it in the gap between clean shaven and beard? I like that idea. It makes him more mysterious. The hair on his head falls in silky waves to his shoulders. Does he live in a place warm enough to wash even in this weather? No one in the house has bathed since the snows came because the womenfolk fear that we won’t dry thoroughly and be as frozen as the water bucket come morning.
But this man looks unafraid of anything.
His hair shares the greys of his wolf pelt cloak, but even with that he looks younger than Uncle Jorkin. Only how could one tell with the wolfmen? Maybe they didn’t wrinkle around the eyes. And this one has such warm, brown eyes. If I put out my hand, could I touch him? Is he as warm as he looks?
Uncle Jorkin puts his hand in my shoulder. “Dolf Kenneally, this is the one.”
“No!” Ma screams. “He’s not! Don’t take him! He’s too young!”
“Is he willing?” Dolf Kenneally’s craggy voice courses through the air and into my bones. I have to concentrate to breath.
“No!” The stairs shake with Ma’s hurried steps.
“Yes.” Uncle Jorkin claps me on the shoulder. “Good luck, Balendin. We will keep you in our thoughts and prayers.”
I take a step into the snow. I nearly slip and the wolfman puts out his hand, but doen’t touch me. I look again into those warm brown eyes that whisper promises of warm toes and a full belly, things I hadn’t experienced in months. I take another step and one more to the ground. The wolfman sinks to his knees in such a graceful, fluid motion at I would have believed that he hadn’t moved at all except his eyes are again level with mine.
I stopped right in front of him. I wanted to touch. Is that all right? What does being a gift to the wolfmen mean? Or am I a trade? The Dolf will make sure my family eats. I have to believe that. I take a deep breath and straighten my shoulders. I smell snow and wet dirt and the heavy tang of my unwashed blanket, but where is the tantalizing scent coming from? Is it the wolfmen?
I wanted to lean forward, to smell and touch and taste, but I hold back. I didn’t want to embarrass my Uncle or Ma or, worse, the Dolf. What if he decides he doesn’t want me? Erlea would not be happy away from the ones she loves. The smell that’s making me crazy comes from Dolf Kenneally himself. I breathe in deeply, hoping for a better whiff. The Dolf grins, warm and inviting, and I ball my hands into fists to keep from tasting his lips.
I take the last step until my toes touched the Dolf’s knees. I don’t care. I have to breath in his scent. Maybe my willingness to get close to him, to touch him, will soothe my family’s worries. I will be all right as long as I am with him.
I blush at the thought, and hide my red face in the edge of his collar, warm and dry despite the cold air and snow. Kenneally bends his head and I feel the warmth of his breath before he rubs his nose along my neck. I want to throw off my blanket and be free of my heavy clothing. I have never felt so warm. My breath is steam, but it should be fire. Even the snow melting into my shoes doesn’t cool me down. A warm voice, like Dolf Kenneally’s but also not, fills my head. “You are willing.”
I look up. Did the Dolf speak without his mouth?
The wolfmen’s howls fill the air, Ma shriek higher and louder than even when Pa died as Uncle Jorkin yelled, “Stop! Wait!”
A hot breath hits my neck just before sharp teeth take the world from me.
~
I wake in fur, on fur, under fur. I have never been so warm. My wolfman is talking, but his words bypass my ears and I hear them in my body, in my head, in my heart. I rubbed one ear, or try, but my fingers don’t work and my ear is in the wrong place. No, not wrong. Just a different place. And some of the fur is mine, on my face, my arm. I burrow out of the covers. My nose gets out before my eyes. I smelled my wolfman and fresh meat.
My stomach growls. I shoved my face into the bowl of chopped meat and organs just beyond the furs. I’ve never eaten meat raw and I only eat organs when I’ll starve otherwise, but they taste good right now. I swallow chunks whole. I’ll choke if I don’t slow down, but I can’t stop. Maybe food just tastes better when no small ones stare sad-eyed at my plate. I eat the last bite and then lick the bowl with my long tongue.
I lick around his mouth. My teeth are sharp and my snout long. And the big, majestic wolf by the fire is my wolfman, Dolf Kenneally. The other wolf is unimportant.
I do belong to the Dolf now, don’t I? The furs in the bed smell like Kenneally, so the house has to be his. The other wolf is the guest. But he isn’t here to take me away, is he? He better not be.
I leap out of the bed and promptly fall over my too big feet. I straightened up. Tempting scents filled the house, but none so enticing as my wolf. My feet don’t want to cooperate and my tail keeps knocking me off balance, but finally I lay my head beside my wolf’s front paw. Kenneally licks my ear and neck and I shiver with pleasure. I rub my face against Kenneally’s — my wolf’s — chest.
“My little one,” Dolf Kenneally says in that voice that is as warm as his eyes.
I flop over and exposed my belly, which felts right despite the guest wolf being nearby. My wolf makes me feel safe. I could lie there all night.
“Only you would set out to find a mate and return with a half grown pup,” says the other wolf in a voice like coal.
“I found both. Maybe.” Dolf Kenneally rubs his nose against my belly. “A youngling will adjust better than an adult. Don’t forget the trouble Phelan’s mate caused him. She couldn’t learn to be happy.”
“You might be right, but isn’t this one male?” He leans toward me.
I roll over to protect my belly, but before I can Dolf Kenneally jumps to his feet, raises his tail, and bares his teeth. The other wolf backs away and averts his head.
Dolf Kenneally is beautiful, majestic, and strong. I feel protected rather than babied. Kenneally stands over me because he wants to, not because I can’t take care of myself. Ma could take lessons from him.
Dolf Kenneally sits back down. I nuzzle him. He nuzzles back.
“But,” said the other wolf, “I am right to believe this one is male? Won’t you need cubs?”
My wolf nibbles my ear. “When he is older, I will get him with cubs and once I do, I will never again need to prove my power.”
