Welcome to Writer In Motion week 3, the first draft.

I have a lot of thoughts about this piece, but I’m going to put them at the end so you folks can dive right in and form your own opinions first. I’ll also be offering a chance for readers to give their first thoughts and insight below (as a CP group might in the early drafts), so keep an eye out for that as well. Without further ado . . . the story.

Writer In Motion first draft

We called it Ketoshé 12, the blue prison, and once again I’d picked a fight with the wrong asshole. At least he was dead now, but by the blood pouring out of my wound, I wasn’t far behind.

KETOSHÉ 12
(BLUE PRISON PLANET)

Everything had gone to shit. Khalon peeled his hand away from the hole in his gut. Blood covered his palm, leaking from the ripped flesh. He just had to open his mouth.

The sterile desert air blew sand across the wastelands, scattering fine grains across the Adaran, a dagger-like device with wings across the hilt and tentacles for a blade. The job was easy, return the device to the Tariha, a large orb that looked and smelled more like the decayed remnants of some long-dead creature.

He’d almost made it, too.

Khalon leaned against the decayed ruins, pain lancing through his gut. A hundred more yards would see the job done, but the cold was already settling in. The walk might well be the last time he ever stood on his feet.

“Gotta earn that bottle of whiskey,” he muttered. Khalon pushed to his feet, the Adaran gripped tight. Nothing stood between him and the Tahira to help keep him upright, so he’d have to rely on shuffling one foot in front of the other.

His knees hit the ground.

Fuck. He’d never make it now.

He pulled a faded photograph out of his breast pocket. A woman with dark hair smiled back at him. He’d nicknamed her Sahéva after the beautiful Guardian who toyed with men’s hearts, but the truth was the woman was as much a mystery as the device in his hand. Except that one he could touch.

“I’ll find you in the next life.” A lie to make his last breath easier to let go.

The wind fluttered and a giant shadow eased in front of him. Quiet as a predator on the hunt, the creature stretched out its wings. Leathery scales glistened from onyx to indigo to a deep wine along the length of its neck, and its mouth opened to rows of long, razor-like fangs.

“Ah fuck.” The damn thing couldn’t wait five minutes to make him dinner. He tightened his grip on the Adaran, cursing that he’d lost his gun hours ago.

Khalon pushed to his feet again, the creature’s vivid blue eyes reflecting the same bright blue glow as the jewel embedded in the hilt. “At least I’ll die on my feet.”

“Die to live, Guardian.” The deep voice rumbled from the creature’s chest. With the speed of a viper, it snatched its jaws around Khalon’s midsection and yanked him into the air.

Pain ripped through his body as he screamed into the slimy gullet. Khalon slammed the Adaran’s points into the tongue, but muscular flesh pulsated along the length of his body, pulling him deeper into the throat.

Slime oozed from the creature’s insides as he dropped into a fleshy sac, his hand still clutching Sahéva’s image. The pain turned to cold ice in the cradled heat. Khalon didn’t bother trying to stop the blood flow, it was pouring out of him faster than he could form a coherent thought.

I picked the worst day to die.

A pinprick of light glowed along the edge of a meaty fold. More illuminated until he was surrounded by a starry scape. A faint hiss emanated from the fleshy insides as each point opened like cracks into swirls and lines.

Khalon pressed against a strange symbol and heat bled into his fingertips. Small indigo flames flickered along his arm until they touched his bleeding wound, shifting to a deep wine color.

“What the fuck?”

Heat seared into his gut. Fire burned through his wound, stitching flesh with sharp, needle-like pain. He curled into a ball, clawing at the creature’s stomach.

Muscles contracted, slimy ooze gushing over him. He pounded against the insides, his feet rising higher.

Khalon dropped to the ground.

Cold air blew over the wet slime, chilling him to the bone. Gritty sand covered his cheek as he gasped for air.

“Finish.” The creature backed away, its wings spread wide as if to strike again.

Khalon had never wanted to shoot anything in the eye so badly, but he spied the Adaran, its blue jewel pulsing with blue light.

He grasped the device and stumbled to his feet. Slime plopped in small droplets onto the sand as he shuffled one foot in front of the other.

I should be dead.

He had a thousand questions about why he felt no pain and what that horrible predator was, but only one mission. Return the Adaran to the Tahira.

Khalon laid a hand on the platform, porous bone engraved with the same symbols he’d seen inside that creature’s stomach.

A light appeared on the horizon, moving fast across the sky. It had to be his ship. About fucking time.

He slammed the Adaran into the slot, only one thing on his mind. Sahéva, he was going to find her. Hopefully before the next asshole tried to eat him.

After-thoughts on this piece

As the writer, there’s a lot of thoughts I have on this piece, so let’s break them down:

Names change: As you can see, in the first line I wrote ‘the blue prison’, and by the time I got to the title it had already changed to ‘blue prison planet.’ Why? Because somewhere I my head I needed to drop a note that this wasn’t just some underground bunker, the entire planet is a prison. This is an unconscious edit note I placed for my next round of revisions.

POV change: Like whyyyyy? I write 3rd/past, always, because that’s where I’m most comfortable as both a reader and a writer. 1st is like that gremlin in the corner that only shows up when you say the wrong word three times. So for this piece, it refused (that’s right – the words are actionable entities) to jump on the page in anything but 1st, but as soon as I wrote the title, my brain did an all-stop, a hard left, and spiraled back into the 3rd comfort zone. The struggle is real, y’all and I have no idea what to do with it.

Yards measurement: This system of measurement doesn’t exist in the Alliance universe. I mostly threw it in there to give myself a better understanding of Khalon’s position in relation to the Tahira. I may or may not fix this by the final draft.

Word redundancy: I am famous for redundant word use, both when I speak and when I write. I’m a work in progress.

The photograph: In this universe, these are actually small sheets of glass – i.e. mini computers where an image might be a still, in motion, or a slideshow. No idea if I’m going to pull that piece of technology in or just let it be a digital printout. There’s a whole backstory to that piece that isn’t too pertinent for this short.

Foreshadowing: I left a hint in there that the creature is tied to the Adaran and its jewel. No idea if the connection was made.

The creature: This is a dragon but I don’t actually say dragon as it’s through the eyes of a man who has never even heard the term. This may or may not be necessary to state for readers.

The Ending: I have two possible endings written into this piece. With every line I wrote, a battle raged in my head—do I give the twisted probably gonna die ending (“I picked the worst day to die”) or do I let the piece run to the end to pull in the dragon bond and mission complete?

Missing elements: There’s a lot of how and why and WTF missing from this piece. What exactly is this world? Why is he there and what will the finished job do? Why are his shipmates just now coming after he should be dead? And why the heck did he take this job? Plus, who’s the jerk he picked a fight with?

As you can see, first drafts tend to turn into a laundry list of questions and notes. This first short piece is a broken story with a lot of holes in it. Already I can tell you that this character’s story should be an entire novel, and if it had just come out of the blue, it would be sitting on my ‘book list’ document waiting in the queue to be fully fleshed out.

Since the goal is to remain a short story of 500-1000 words, I’ll need to start poking at the important elements to flesh out, and burn away the bits that don’t matter.

How readers can help

For this week only, I’m going to open the floor to reader feedback directly on the story, but as I would with critique partners, I’m looking for specific insight.

1. Which ending do you like best (or has the stronger feel)? Should Khalon appear to be at the end of his life with “I picked the worst day to die” or should his mission come to completion?
2. Is the jump from 1st to 3rd too jarring or did it add some strange, magical quality?
3. Name one element of this story you wanted to know more about.
4. Which element(s) in the story seemed extraneous? i.e. No purpose.

Be sure to leave your answers in the comments below!

Over the next week I’ll be self-revising this short story. I hope to have a mid-week blog post about how it’s coming along, but next weekend you’ll get to read the first revised copy. Keep following my journey in the coming weeks to learn what assigned critique partners and editors have to say about it. I’ll be talking about their comments, how I digest them and which ones are right to make this story shine.

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K.J. Harrowick is a freelance web developer and graphic designer with more than a decade on industry experience on a diverse range of projects. As a child, she fell in love with fantasy worlds like those found in the books of Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey, which continued well into adulthood with the worlds of Ivan Cat, Rand & Robin Miller, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, and E. R. Mason. She began to world build and create fantasy languages in 2004, and in 2014 it became a full-blown passion to write and publish her own books. Currently she resides in the rainy Pacific Northwest where she works with a broad range of client projects, plots how to destroy her characters’ lives, and occasionally falls down rabbit holes.

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