Brief context:
The moon has grown a giant mouth and is silently, madly whispering what experts, lip-readers, etc cannot translate.
The POV is a maths expert (haw haw haw, let's see me try and write that convincingly) who suddenly develops dyscalculia [I'm a dyscalculiac - it's horrid but you get used to coping techniques etc]. He's the only 'survivor'.
It's obvs absurd/weird fic, and I suppose if I had to do a mood board for the story, it'd be similar to a Tim Burton film, and the town Sunburye (based on Swanage, Dorset) similar to the setting of The Music of Erich Zaan (Lovecraft), where tall, skinny, houses lean to the roads, overlapped, forced perspective.
With that in mind, I'm wondering how to start the story. I was going to write it as an omni news-report, or omni 3P, but I find I've drifted into 1st which I don't usually write my longer forms in. I'm not sure if 1st person is the way to go, and I should do old fashioned 1970s omni.
Before I get into the inciting events, I'm following an old-fashioned setting-the-scene this way, seeing as so much of the short horrors I've read lately (old and new) tend to go this way, and I'm a huge fan of M R James who does this well.
Anyway. Simple question, I'm trying to keep this short, but there are symbols and themes that have organically come up in my loose planning, and I'm wondering if this opening is effective.
Thanks.
pH
Watching a bee repeatedly head-butt a window was a marvel to me as a child. I even talked to the stupid things, pointing them to the open window that lay only a foot away. Didn’t it smell the freedom? They had hundreds of eyes, didn’t they, so I never understood why so many ended up blind, insistent on flying through a window as if physics meant nothing.
Sadly, like all children, I became disinterested - and possibly afraid of a sting (therein lay another conundrum: why defend yourself for a mere Pyrrhic victory?) I eschewed saving the bumbling thing and went off, my head turned by some other pursuit cherished by little kids.
That memory’s occurred to me many times as I write this (which is more for company than anything else, but I suppose someone’s got to record what’s happened); not that the throngs of mute people mindlessly walking single file, hand-in-hand, around the odd alleys, streets and lanes of Sunburye - and, I assume, the entire globe - really care.
Matthew, the poster boy for the phrase, there’s none so blind as those who don’t see... springs to mind. If he’s looking down on us from the Pearly Gates he’s probably thinking, Bit of an understatement. Although, notwithstanding your religious bent, I doubt there’s anyone up there remotely concerned with the veracity of our ecclesiastical texts.
Something else, perhaps. Something with a less edifying agenda.
ETA: Sorry, I'd edited the sentence down, thanks @sule - it should make sense now.
The moon has grown a giant mouth and is silently, madly whispering what experts, lip-readers, etc cannot translate.
The POV is a maths expert (haw haw haw, let's see me try and write that convincingly) who suddenly develops dyscalculia [I'm a dyscalculiac - it's horrid but you get used to coping techniques etc]. He's the only 'survivor'.
It's obvs absurd/weird fic, and I suppose if I had to do a mood board for the story, it'd be similar to a Tim Burton film, and the town Sunburye (based on Swanage, Dorset) similar to the setting of The Music of Erich Zaan (Lovecraft), where tall, skinny, houses lean to the roads, overlapped, forced perspective.
With that in mind, I'm wondering how to start the story. I was going to write it as an omni news-report, or omni 3P, but I find I've drifted into 1st which I don't usually write my longer forms in. I'm not sure if 1st person is the way to go, and I should do old fashioned 1970s omni.
Before I get into the inciting events, I'm following an old-fashioned setting-the-scene this way, seeing as so much of the short horrors I've read lately (old and new) tend to go this way, and I'm a huge fan of M R James who does this well.
Anyway. Simple question, I'm trying to keep this short, but there are symbols and themes that have organically come up in my loose planning, and I'm wondering if this opening is effective.
Thanks.
pH
Watching a bee repeatedly head-butt a window was a marvel to me as a child. I even talked to the stupid things, pointing them to the open window that lay only a foot away. Didn’t it smell the freedom? They had hundreds of eyes, didn’t they, so I never understood why so many ended up blind, insistent on flying through a window as if physics meant nothing.
Sadly, like all children, I became disinterested - and possibly afraid of a sting (therein lay another conundrum: why defend yourself for a mere Pyrrhic victory?) I eschewed saving the bumbling thing and went off, my head turned by some other pursuit cherished by little kids.
That memory’s occurred to me many times as I write this (which is more for company than anything else, but I suppose someone’s got to record what’s happened); not that the throngs of mute people mindlessly walking single file, hand-in-hand, around the odd alleys, streets and lanes of Sunburye - and, I assume, the entire globe - really care.
Matthew, the poster boy for the phrase, there’s none so blind as those who don’t see... springs to mind. If he’s looking down on us from the Pearly Gates he’s probably thinking, Bit of an understatement. Although, notwithstanding your religious bent, I doubt there’s anyone up there remotely concerned with the veracity of our ecclesiastical texts.
Something else, perhaps. Something with a less edifying agenda.
ETA: Sorry, I'd edited the sentence down, thanks @sule - it should make sense now.
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