JC
- MUSIC FOCUS: Inspired by the music of Linkin Park.
- ACTIVITY FOCUS: Write the opening to a story!
FAINT DECEMBER
Chapter 1: Wake
October
When I wake in the middle of the night, it’s like the blackness of my bedroom has crawled inside me. I feel swallowed by it. Like someone’s put me in an envelope and sent me to a place that doesn’t exist, then just left me in the envelope. I can’t get out. I can’t get out. I have no control over these feelings.
I reach into the darkness; my headphones are ready and waiting; the music I need to hear is already cued. I press play. Faint December. The band’s music pours through me, shoving the darkness back into the corner. I can keep an eye on it there. I know I’ll be alright now. At last I fall back to sleep.
I wake again when Mum pulls my headphones off.
“You’ll be late for school,” she says and kisses me on the top of my head.
She leaves the room and I hear my brother, Josh, emerging from his cave down the hall.
“Alright, freak,” he says when I enter the kitchen.
I ignore him and he turns his attention back to the TV. I look around. Everything’s where it always is: the same cereal boxes on the counter; the plastic bottle containing Mum’s red-topped watery version of milk and the blue-capped real stuff for me and Josh; the fruit bowl placed in a way that means we always have to stretch across it. Mum gets everything out and ready every morning. She remains hopeful that someday we’ll grab an apple or a banana rather than head straight for the Coco Pops. One day I’ll do it just to see her face.
Josh is laughing at something on the TV, his mouth too full with cornflakes, milk dribbling down his chin. The cartoons have finished and I don’t know what he’s laughing at – something disgusting probably. I have loads of time, so I eat my breakfast slowly, then somehow I’m late and I have to run for the bus. It overtakes me but then waits at the stop for me to catch up. I climb on, looking only for Amber.
“You’d think she’d be early,” someone says, “it’s not as if she spends time putting make-up on.”
“Yeah, but she should,” someone else laughs, as if that hadn’t been the point in the first place.
“Wouldn’t make any difference, she’d still be gross.”
I hear the boys’ comments just like I know they want me to. I think of shooting them a poisonous look, but it would only deflect off them the same way it would rebound off the mascara-thick force field of the girls sitting amongst them. Why don’t they stick up for me? Shouldn’t any girl hate to hear other girls spoken about like that? Who am I kidding? For the back-of-the-bus crew – the nitwits as I like to think of them – school is a fashion show. I’ve got more important things to be thinking about. That’s what I tell myself.
Amber raises her eyebrows at me as I let myself fall into the seat next to hers. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Her thoughts are the same as mine. I know this as absolutely as I know the sky is blue. I glance out of the bus window. Well, blue-ish.
The bus drops us a few metres past the school gates. As we walk back and turn into the long driveway, Josh pulls in too. In his car. He pretends not to see me, and Amber has to pull me out of the way before he knocks me over.
“What a loser,” I sigh.
“Takes one to know one,” Amber says.
“You’d know,” I laugh.
And so our day begins.
Just like any other.
ACTIVITY 1
Write the opening chapter to your story. It does not have to follow the structure below, but you might like to use the prompts I’ve outlined:
Establish the enemy! Describe the challenge you’re up against, the feeling you want to fight…
Maybe you’re writing about the power of music – or maybe the power of something else that plays a similar role in your life. If it’s music, you might want to incorporate song titles along the way. Or, perhaps, there’s a different way of embedding your influences in the story – in a way that feels subtle, like some kind of secret code. (As well as embedding Linkin Park song titles throughout ‘Faint December’ – even the title is a fusion of ‘Faint’ and ‘My December’ – I’ve also sprinkled lots of Titanic quotes throughout the story!).
Articulate your response to the challenge in a way that establishes the presence of your ‘secret weapon’. In my case, the ‘secret weapon’ is music.
Introduce one or two of the key characters in your narrator’s life.
Outline the setting/scenario. Establish the routine of your daily life.
Describe a familiar journey.
Describe the arrival at a familiar place.
Now, read chapter 2.
Looking to develop your creative writing even further? Have a look at our ‘FTRE’ series.