Excerpts

Here's a place to put experts of your grand novel. Myself, I'll put the excerpt that I have on the NaNo site for now. I know that this place loads... loads faster. (Pun intended)

Nice!

Weird. I posted an excerpt here and it disappeared. Maybe I only thought I posted it and navigated away from/closed the tab by accident. Or maybe I posted it in a totally different thread and can't find it now. I am a total embarrassment to myself. Anyhow, I like reading people's excerpts and the Nano site is slow for me, so I can't go snooping around in profiles. More excerpts! *bangs spoon on high chair*

Here's a small one from mine.

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In her sleep Madi found memories, scattering like feathers that had been dropped from a great height. They were all bright and dusty, stained with the red-orange clay of home, the shocking aqua-blue of the house with its yellow  trim. Built like a good cake, her grandmother used to tell her, frosted all over with colors so you cannot ever forget which one is yours. The battered wooden fence, the boards splitting, hoary and grey from many seasons of rainfall. The clothesline that stretched from the fence to the single tree in the yard, a piece of dirty cotton rope that held their white underclothes, washed and bleached until they nearly glowed in the sun. The tree itself was a deep wine-red most of the spring and summer and blazed a brilliant scarlet later in the year, a pretty thing, but she far preferred the enormous Texas oak in the town square, sprawling three or four trunks and sporting round whitened rings like pox scars where branches had been sawed off due to disease or inconvenience. That tree shadowed the fountain, a tableau that she loved, the twisting scarred bark bent over the adobe-bricked fountain with its pretty voice, the soft babble that made the dusty streets seem less so, especially in the summertime when there were children climbing in its low branches, chattering like monkeys.

They had been permitted to splash harmlessly in the fountain (but you must never go in completely, their mother had said, a piece of advice they patently ignored when they thought they could get away with it), but they had never been permitted to play in the river. During rainy season they had been barred from it completely. She had sneaked down to it once, alone, just after a heavy microburst had subdued all the earth in the streets, churning it into unrecognizable mud. She remembered that even the oak tree looked like a stranger in the square, secret and dark, waterlogged, with a branch snapped off and hanging only by its bark, the wood inside stark white and vulnerable, splintered apart. Everything looked as if it had been brought up from a shipwreck, the shapes the same but the essence changed, soaked through and bloated.

The dissatisfied, hungry roar of the river had nearly deafened her before she was close enough to see it. It was the only thing in her small world, she thought, that became ravenous the more it was fed, like the tales of the wendigo her brother Jaime had told her late at night after reading it in a book he brought from the bookmobile that came through town, the shiny green bus that reminded her of an alligator laying in the dust. The wendigo was a creature that humans became, a cannibal who grew by how much it ate, never sated, always skeletal and hungry.  The river, in sharp contrast, was fat and rushing, swollen with the rainfall, churning as it raced through the gorge. She could feel it rumbling beneath her feet. The rickety board bridge was gone, sheared away by the rising water, and the river seemed so much wider now than it ever had, a solid roiling mass; the soft clay it had eaten away turned it orange and thick, the consistency of cocoa, not transparent at all. It seemed a different animal than the fountain in the square; if that quiet babbling thing were a sheep, this river was a lion, a shark, a crocodile, lightning-fast with many teeth and primal instincts. Eat. Fight. Rush through. Don't stop. It would devour the ground from beneath her feet if she stood there long enough.

   Finally having cleared her head and calmed down, Maddie looked up.
   That was when she saw the ghost.
   Or, rather, someone dressed as a ghost. That lame Halloween costume, a bed sheet with two holes cut for eyes, that someone once upon a time thought was actually scary.
   The person in the bed sheet was standing between her and the wall. Probably, he or she was looking down at Maddie, but it was hard to tell. In the darkness of the room, Maddie couldn't see inside the eye holes. Of course, this put her in mind of all those cartoons where the hero whips off the sheet, saying something like "it's just a kid in a costume", to discover that there's nothing under the sheet at all, and cue running and screaming. In this case, however, there really was someone under the sheet?Maddie could see their feet and ankles protruding from under the sheet.
   Maddie quickly stood up.
   "Hello." She said.
   The person in the sheet didn't respond.
   "Hello?"
   Nothing. Maddie took a step towards it.
   "Who are you? You're the first person I've seen here, besides Chase."
   Nothing.
   "Can you hear me? I'm trying to talk to you." Maddie was starting to talk a little bit too fast, and tried to slow herself down with little success. "Are you alright? Why aren't you answering me?" There was still no response, and Maddie walked right up to the thing?the person.
   The person still didn't respond, but this close Maddie could see the movement of the sheet in front of their face as they breathed. In and out, with small motions.
   "Hello? Why are you wearing that sheet?" And that was the wrong question to ask, because all though the person wearing the sheet did not answer, her imagination did.
   Maddie took a step back. Then another.
   The cartoons had it wrong. It wasn't the discovery that there was nothing underneath the sheet that made it scary. No, that could be explained away. When you stripped away the trick-or-treat buckets and the slapstick humor, there was something worse there. *Edit:Cut out that sentence. It isn't necessary.* The awful thing about a ghost under a sheet was knowing something was underneath, but having no idea who. Or what.
   Maddie took another step back, then left the room. The ghost followed, silently.

Chapter 6 (random, I know) at my LJ here: http://phoquess.livejournal.com/19527.html

Just a reminder to everyone to be careful about posting sections of your novel if you ever want to get it published. Publishers may very well reject you if you've already 'published' your novel somewhere online, as most of them want First Publication rights.

If you want to put it online for your friends, make sure it's password protected.

Or, if you don't care about it getting published, ignore what I just said.

*sigh* Fine.... I guess I'll delete my little expert *goes away to do just that*

Short excerpts are /usually/ fine. I'm just warning you about longer sections. Of course IANAA (I Am Not An Agent), so my advice probably isn't 100% accurate. I just wanted to make sure no one ruined their plans.

Short excerpts are /usually/ fine. I'm just warning you about longer sections. Of course IANAA (I Am Not An Agent), so my advice probably isn't 100% accurate. I just wanted to make sure no one ruined their plans.

If it's too long to post on the Nano excerpt profile, it's too long to post anywhere without it being under a friends-lock or something. I think Nano allows the maximum amount of characters that it could legally give you without taking away any of your rights, if I remember correctly.

This is early on in the book, and this is the first thing that I've ever written that's longer than eight pages, so here goes.

Alyx stepped off and motioned for me to follow. I stepped onto the concrete floor and saw a strange looking creature behind a glass window. It had two scythe-like bones protruding from its front arms where the human elbow would be. It seemed to be putting a lot of weight on them. Alyx said, "This is a Boron; they are an intelligent species from an asteroid that crashed in 2021 in the middle of the Sahara desert. They ravaged the desert until they stumbled upon a village.
The village elder called the government, requesting assistance. They sent in several helicopters, but it was too late. Everything was dead, or eaten. Nothing was spared." Turning my head to look at the creature, the Boron, it reared up and shot a small object at my left leg. It hit the glass and the Boron shot forward; the glass exploded and shattered and ricocheted around the room. It roared at Alyx, then took a swipe at her with one of it's long blades.
She screamed and jumped against the wall, the blade just missing her elbow. The Boron hit the wall and turned around. 
I grabbed a sharp piece of the glass and took a step forward to stab the Boron, but the Boron noticed and kicked me with it's hind leg.

Jango-Jordan:

If this were the first section I read, I would definitely want to read more.  Some comments below.  Hope they don't sound too nitpicky. :-)

Why the first person?  Since this is only an excerpt, obviously I don't know how the story starts.  Is it a memoir, or is this a flashback scene?

I wonder why the Boron chose to escape now since it apparently was able to break the glass at any time.  And it seems to have broken it rather easily.  If this is some sort of military institution that's keeping the alien, it doesn't seem like they have adequately secure measures in place to prevent escape, especially if this is the future and more robust technologies than glass are available.

The word "noticed" seems awkward in a fight scene.  Something more dynamic like "saw my reflection" or "must have sensed me coming" seems more appropriate.  (And you get more words for your word count!)

This is my prologue, and it's über short...   
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It’s raining again.

But who is to say that the raindrops aren’t made of blood or ink or tears?  From in here it would all sound the same.  Color makes no noise on the rooftop of a mansion with no address.

An antique end table guards me from the rest of the world, and I’m being rescued by a thousand fingers that are wrapped constrictively around me---around my waist, around my arms, around my lips where my teeth can’t reach them.  But they’re all muzzles, those fingers, holding me back, but letting me watch.  Rescued indeed.

The two open doors---teasing before me---no longer go unoccupied.  An angel resides in the first, but he’s not nearly as angelic as another boy I know.  This angel is being held by the throat, and I can’t hear him breathe.

A boy arrives inside of the second door, grave and skilled and as graceful as a lunar eclipse.  Gray-faced men follow him in, deadly with their raised fists and their tear free eyes.

The boy is against the wall, and my heart is on the floor.

He’s so pretty in his high tops and muscles, but he’s even prettier when he says my name.

Yeah, well I didn’t ask for this.  I never once wanted this.

But don’t take the boy; he’s too much like an angel.

love_liv: ...woah. Awesome. I want to read yours.

So I'm several pages (read, several thousand words) into an extended went-fists-flying-into-the-lions-den-to-rescue-comrades section, and part of the reason I've stalled in my word count is because fight scenes are NOT my specialty. Really, I should be writing sappy romance novels instead of this dark urban fantasy stuff that I somehow wound up switching to two years ago.

But I was rereading a section to "catch up" to where I'd left my MC the last time I plugged away at my word count, and was a little pleased to discover I liked it.  Who knows if it will stay when the Big, Bad Internal Editor comes a-calling, but for now it has helped inspire me to believe I *can* (hopefully) write convincing fight scenes.

Slogging doggedly through the 20ks, hopefully to reach 30k by tonight!

----- begin excerpt -----

Picking up the automatic rifle, I slung it over my shoulder and reloaded the crossbow. I dropped down to the bottom floor by jumping over the railings, taking the stairs a set at a time. The pandemonium on the second floor reassured me that Moondancer was still keeping them busy and was, at least, still alive and kicking.

I ducked out into a wide hallway. Recalling the rough map of the level I’d gotten from the binoculars and the security room, I headed left. The hallway made a right, then forked into a T, which I knew wrapped around the great hall. I peered to the right, then whisked my head back around the wall before the two guards saw me, and cocked the crossbow. Torches set in sconces were lit here, lending light to the otherwise pitch black hallway. I lifted my goggles back onto my forehead and blinked a few times to readjust to the new lighting.

After a few moments, I lunged sideways from my hiding place. The guards had started cautiously advancing. I sent my bolt flying, catching the nearest guard. The bolt bounced into his chest right on target, but the thickness of the point couldn’t penetrate the chainmail vest he was wearing.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered as I ducked back behind cover. I hadn’t counted on archaic armor, but if it had been effective for hundreds of years, it certainly was effective here as well.

Bullets were already chipping at the corner of the wall as the guards fired at me. I swapped my crossbow for the automatic rifle. Then, kneeling, I threw myself flat on my side on the ground in the hallway and, firing two quick, successive shots, dropped the sconces holding the torches. The vampires adjusted their fire quickly. As the torches fell, sputtering on the ground, I rolled backward and sat back up on my feet in the smaller hallway. I flipped the night-vision goggles back into place.

A burning sensation in my upper left arm let me know that I hadn’t escaped entirely unscathed. I ignored it, dropping the ranged weapons to the ground and breaking a stake in half, slanted over a bended knee. The wood was such that it splintered into long, slender fragments.

My ears strained for the sounds of an ambush behind me. The gunfire couldn’t have gone unnoticed.

In the meantime, the two guards were moving forward, judging by the clink of their chainmail and the bouncing beams of the tiny lights attached to the rifles that they’d switched on. A rifle poked around the corner and I let fly a high kick, knocking the point upward and away from me. It fired a shot into the ceiling before I wrestled it from the vampire’s hands and tossed it away. Whirling with his arm in my grip, I flipped him over my shoulder and jabbed downward with my other arm. The ragged edges of the makeshift point slid jerkily between the rings of his chainmail, eating flesh but not hitting the heart. From behind my goggles, I saw the vampire smirk as the wood caught, and I felt his arm in my grip tense as he prepared to kick himself upright.

I couldn’t deal with him right away though. I heard the armor clink behind me. I released the first vampire’s arm and pivoted on one foot, my kick catching the second vampire in the arm and disarming him. I dropped to the ground and swept his legs out from under him, then grabbed the automatic rifle and rammed it behind me, catching the first vampire in the chest. He stumbled backward.

Glancing over my shoulder to find my target, I rammed the butt of the rifle against the blunt end of the stake still sticking out of his chest. It slid home, and the vampire dusted, the chainmail falling to the floor with the wood still caught between its rings. Tucking the rifle against my side and backing down the hall, I fired rapidly at the other guard, who was advancing warily. The bullets chipped away at his chainmail armor, creating holes in spots where I was deliberately clustering my shots. He realized what I was doing and made a lunge for me, hands outstretched.

I dropped into a crouch and dug the barrel of the rifle into the vampire’s chest, his forward momentum helping me to lift him up and over me, then switched quickly to the other stake and slammed it into his heart through one of the holes I’d created in his armor.

I rose to my feet and dusted myself off, cocking my head to one side as I listened for more guards. There were none. I knew better than to assume that there actually weren’t any left, however.

She’s waiting for me, I thought, and strode down the hallway toward the double doors.

----- end excerpt -----

Edit: found a couple typos ... need to ... stop editing ...

I was getting a bit annoyed with where I was in the story, so I decided to write a little first person history of the universe thingy to keep it making sense in my mind and to break me out of the rut. I was originally going to write it in the form of notes, but it came out in one of the character's voices. Here it be, though I'm unsure as to its literary merits:

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*excerpt removed*
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caveats, liv, you are both amazing! Ach, I just feel so inadequate here...