In Today’s Journal
* Setting, and Characters’ Opinions 3: An Example
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Setting, and Characters’ Opinions 3: An Example
I recommend you read the first two parts of this short series before reading this one. Check the past couple of days.
To help illustrate all of this, I sent my young writer friend a scene of just under 1000 words from Chapter 5 of my current novel in progress.
I recommend you read it for pleasure first, then reread it to identify character and setting description and how I presented that. Note that the space between paragraphs would not normally be there:
That night on the beach, a nearly full moon hung just above the western horizon. The air was damp, and the temps were probably in the upper 60s or low 70s. I was still without a home to speak of. I didn’t sleep on the beach or anything so romantic as that, but I’d found some places to crash under the docks only a mile or two to the north when the tide was out, and near them when it was in.
Then one night in May, as I was walking south along the beach, the muffled sounds of a struggle came from my left front. The sounds—the quiet cursing of a masculine voice, the frantic feminine sounds of a woman trying to appease someone, then rejecting him, then defending herself against him. As I said, the whole circumstance was similar to what had happened a few years earlier.
And that same “something” came over me again, but not in a flash. It eased itself over me, as if I was passively slipping into a warm, calming blanket.
I spotted a rock outcropping some fifty yards away that seemed to be the source of the sounds, and I angled in that direction.
When I’d closed about half the distance or a little more, a scream came from that same outcropping and I broke into a sprint.
As I came around a large boulder—probably four feet in diameter and a good seven or eight feet tall—and into the outcropping, the broad chest and shoulders of a man glistened in the moonlight as he leaned forward. His left arm was extended slightly above him, his palm pressed flat against a rock face. Below his torso were his own bare pinkish butt cheeks and his thighs, his knees pressed into the sand, and his swimming trunks around his calves. On either side, pearly white girl knees glowed above shapely calves and trim ankles and feet.
I plowed into the man’s back with my whole body, my arms wrapping around his chest and my head turned to the right between his sandy shoulder blades.
When I hit him, his left arm folded at the shoulder, his body skewed to the right, and his head contacted the rock wall. Solidly. Something audibly cracked. Like a thick, dry twig snapping in a spooky forest at night.
He dropped straight down, and I dropped on top of him.
He didn’t struggle.
As I quickly pushed myself up and away and back, to my left front I spotted an oval face and blond hair and a creamy throat and milky shoulders and the top of a bikini. The guy lay across her left thigh and leg from just above her left knee down to her ankle.
I twitched as if to reach to pull his left leg off her, then stopped, looked at her, and whispered, “Are you all right?”
Her eyes like saucers, she bobbed her head. “Y-yes.” She appeared to be in her late 20s.
I jerked a thumb toward the north. “Listen, if you can get free by yourself, I’m gonna—”
“No!” She emitted a quiet groan. Frustration. “I mean… can you wait? Just for a second? Please?”
I only looked at her.
She extended her right hand, her fingers curling like those of a beckoning siren. “Maybe you could help me up?”
“Okay.” But warnings were pinging back and forth in my mind. I ignored her hand, edged forward, and crouched. I grabbed the he-man’s left ankle and calf, then straightened and lifted his leg all the way up to his hip.
After she pulled her left leg out from under his leg, I dropped it. “Look, I really have to go. But you didn’t see anything, right?” I pointed at the body. “And you haven’t seen that?”
As she put her left hand against the rock wall and got to her feet, she didn’t even glance at the body. She only looked at me for a moment, that blond hair slightly tousled but glistening in the moonlight. Her eyelids had relaxed a little and her eyes were calmer, but they were still filled with excitement. Her hands rested on luscious hips. Her bikini was still in place. Orange. The bikini was orange. Then her lips curled in a slight smile and she stepped out of the almost-cave. “I haven’t seen what?”
I raised my arm to point again, then dropped it. “Ah. Okay. Good. Thanks.”
She took a step and put one fingernail on my t-shirt. “No, I should be thanking you. Shouldn’t I? Wouldn’t you like a reward for being my hero?”
Which made me wonder, if she’s in that kind of mood, what had she found lacking in the guy on the ground? Before I interfered, I mean. Everything about him was lacking now. Still, my gaze flicked to her breasts and the curve of her hips before I forced it back to her eyes.
She was still smiling, her eyebrows arched a little, and that fingernail was tracing lower over my chest.
I took a half-step back. “Sorry. I-I’m sure that would be great, but I really have to go.”
For all I knew, she was a black widow or something. Besides, California’s just weird, and it’s chock full of weird people. I was betting she was one of them. “I have a… uh—” I rolled my left wrist up as if to look at my watch, but I don’t have a watch. “A meeting.”
Still smiling, she canted her head a little and arched her eyebrows.
“I mean a rendezvous. You know.”
She bit her lower lip lightly and nodded.
“With a girl. My girl. Up there.” I pointed north along the beach, then turned away and walked off in that direction.
From behind me came the faint sounds of giggling.
I felt as if I’d effected an escape.
I hope this helps.
I’ll be back tomorrow to wrap up this series with Setting and Characters’ Opinions 4.
Of Interest
What’s that? A New Noir and Hard-Boiled Mystery Publisher? Video. I’m kind’a hoping they’ll keep me in mind. But I’m more of a source than a prospect, so….
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1130
Writing of Blackwell Ops 49: Wesley Stark
Day 1…… 2381 words. To date…… 2381
Day 2…… 3283 words. To date…… 5664
Day 3…… 2934 words. To date…… 8598
Day 4…… 2305 words. To date…… 10903
Day 5…… 3356 words. To date…… 14259
Day 6…… 2295 words. To date…… 16554
Day 7…… 3271 words. To date…… 19825
Day 8…… 2660 words. To date…… 22485
Fiction for October………………… 46040
Fiction for 2025…………………… 624578
Nonfiction for October.…………… 12390
Nonfiction for 2025……………….. 222500
2025 consumable words………… 839509
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 15
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 119
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 306
Short story collections……………………. 29