My novel

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I want to throw in hints that Eva could have HFA/Asperger's syndrome. Got to make them extra subtle, though.

I admire how you've stuck with your basic idea for over a year, even if you've had to make lots of revisions. I find myself coming up with lots of ideas but then losing interest in each of them over time.

Thanks, Brandon.

Have I ever brought up the fact that there are literally no good guys in RE? It's Gray vs. Black in this Crapsack World; highly questionable anti-heroes versus the scum of the earth. Like the tagline I came up with: Youth is dead. Power is everything. Life is cheap.

So yeah... the book's going to be quite cynical.

Still stuck on the FIRST f*****g CHAPTER.

Kill me now.

If you're stuck on the first chapter, you might want to consider "exercises" to gain a deeper understanding of your story and your characters. For example, write a scene where you have someone - not necessarily a character in your book (although when I tried this, she became a character in the book ) meet or describe one of your characters. Have one of your characters walk into a bar or whatever else might be suitable in one of your main setting, and start chatting to learn more about the place (this works best if the character isn't from that place). You get the idea. Or, if you're really frustrated, you might want to just set it aside for a while. Write something else, so you don't lose the potential momentum you may have built up.

I wrote three pages on the fly today. First chapter. I'm also writing a stream-of-consciousness rant from Eva's perspective. It's basically her inner chaos put on paper.

Good idea. Intuitive improvisation is a good way to write, as long as you have the structure down.

I have written a thousand words so far.

Any of you think about stealing this, DON'T.
Warning: contains profanity, derogatory names, and eighties references.

My eyes are open.
Those words are as good as any to begin this crazy little story of mine. That was the first thing that popped into my head as I woke up. Not the fact that it was going to be raining for awhile. It always rains in Janus City. Not the fact that it's Thursday, and I'm running. Not the fact that I'm open for business because I'm wearing nothing but my panties. I shudder at the thought. I palm underneath my pillow for my Beretta. Sometimes I have this irrational fear that I won't wake up, that my jugulars will be reopened or the Beretta would go off and paint the bed with sausages and Jell-O
NO
The window. Janus City greets me through the blinds, all neon and rain drip drip dripping on the glass. The ceiling fan spins around like clockwork, beating me with the winds from Aeolus's bag of tricks, and the holoclock reads 5:30 AM. Huh. I'm genuinely surprised. Was it a creeper's bump in the night? Insomnia? Figure it out, like my mother said.
I have a very rigid morning routine. It keeps me active, focused, where I have to be.
I do the usual. s**t, piss, shower. For breakfast: a stale box of Wonder Flakes, the cereal of the Off-World Colonies. “It’s not just great… it’s WONDROUS!” In all reality, it’s as bland as escargot, even when it’s fresh.
I’ve got some time, so I hop on Pegasus, my console. I have a chuckle downloading the latest blockbusters before they hit the screen in stunning HD and watching some ret*d kid get crushed by a stampede of bull elephant. Don’t tell me it was an unfortunate accident. He knew, in his simian brain, what he was doing.
Finally, I don the highest of runner fashion: a long, green London trenchcoat with a hood; Ray-Ban Wayfarers, upgraded with an added reality interface; slightly (just slightly) torn jeans; and Nikes that have seen one patch of scum to many.
The final step: the mirror. In one word, describe your emotional state.
Well, I’m twenty-one years old… or twenty? Twenty-three? I have no f*****g clue. I’d just popped a couple of Valiums, so I can be a little zoned out. It relaxes the earthquakes on the inside. I’m in my early twenties, I have red hair, milk skin, bee-stung lips, dark eyes. People say I look like Molly Ringwald. Could I be a clone of her? Figure it out.
Heard mother was living and dying in L.A. I’m certain it is better down there than here.
I’m twenty something… and my brain is fried.
“I don’t f*****g know. Fine.”
Fine.
You’re in the garage now, staring at the Crown Victoria. Twenty years old, and what are you doing, besides running? I don’t know I don’t know I don’t f*****g know f**k
Keep yourself at bay, Eva.
You’re just going to run. So far awaaaaaay.
###
Shukutai Task Management, Inc. is a two-story office building, a miniature tower of glass. Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if the place was struck by lightning. All of Tricky Dick’s easily-earned money goes tumbling down and slicing me and him and his lackeys to ribbons. I wish.
Dick Shukutai. That last name means “scumbag” in Japanese. Chinese f****r looks the type too, five foot five, two hundred pounds, Hawaiian shirt stained with sweat and coffee and dirty Aviators. I keep my Wayfarers clean, despite the fact that I wade through the swamp on a daily basis. I land my Crown Vic in the back parking lot, get out, and go south through the transparent glass doors. Davey Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” is playing over the speakers. “Eva,” Will the deskbot says, “glad you got over here. The Cap wants your ass in his office.” Cap. That was Will’s name for Shukutai.
On a normal day, a low-level runner like me only catches a fleeting glimpse of Shukutai. You’d only get called up if you f****d up big time or were getting a raise. I get the feeling that this is none of the above. My guesses are spot on so much, you’d think I was psychic.
“Hi, Will.” I take off the Wayfarers. “What’s Dick up to? Probably wanting me to join in on a threesome with him and his ladies.”
“Eva, you’re such a cynic.”
“It’s my nature, I guess. I…” Pause. “I just popped a couple Valiums. I’m a little zoned out, like I always am.”
“You sound like you need to disconnect, girl? You know, get some R&R? Hey,” Will taps my shoulder, leans forward, “You ever try the Red Room? Golden.”
“That’s a redesign hangout. A natural like me’d get her eyes gouged out just looking at the place. It’s that exclusive.”
Redesigns. All the gifts that science can give them, and what do they do with it? This:
Hey, Steve!
Hey, Jake!
Say, Steve!
Yes, Jake!
Do you like my Ferrari?
That’s nothing, you should see my Lam.
I go up the stairs, turn right, down a few offices to the end of the hall. As I walk towards Cap's door, I can hear chit-chit-chatter. Looks like he's got guests. Another one of his more shadier business ventures I suppose. The windows of some of the offices are busted, mine are cracked, and the thick smell of cigarettes emanate from underneath Shukutai's door. I'm dying for one right now. Cap's got a little lantern that you stick the cig in as soon as you got in your mouth to light it, resembles a Chojin. Japanese have taken over the world. I can see the videoboard geisha, white as porcelain, eyes blacker than obsidian, sing to me through the cracked windows of my office. Big Brother is watching.
I open the door to see Shukutai sitting behind his desk, tweedling his thumbs, cigarette burning between forefinger and f**k you finger. Raises eyes to mine, says "Mosh-mosh, Evadge. How's the low life going?" He snorts his primordial snot back through the tubes of his nose.
"Captain Shukutai."
I pause. I noticed four things wrong with this room: a pretty guy; a graying crew-cut, beer gut shirt-button buster in a wool coat; another Chinese, a girl, folding origami and sitting in the back, right corner, rocking her chair; and a woman of about forty, maternal looking, white coat.
"Don't be a gopher, Evadge. Sit down."
I do that.
"Cig?" he offers.
"Sure."
Light her up. Rock n' roll.
Leaning back into the leather seat, steam from my mouth like Godzilla, I draw my attention to Origami Girl. She's real focused on her art. So far, she's made a bear, a snake, a worm, and a butterfly. Staring at the paper facsimiles, I am lost. It happens a lot. I feel like I don't know where I am, what time it is. Sometimes, I don't even care what condition my body's in. I am simply numb. Butterfly.
I want one A little little orange one
"Yo!" I shout, fingers surrounding my mouth. Origami Girl doesn't answer.
The motherly looking one says, "That's Trish. She prefers to let her actions speak for her."
Shukutai: "Evadge, this is Dr. Cope. Dr. Cope, this is Evadge."
"Call me Eva."
"What's the problem with 'Evadge'?" Cope asks. She peeks down, then veers her eyes back to Shukutai. "Oh. I see. Pleasure to meet you." She extends her left hand. I reach for it, but it cuts through her like air.
"Artificially intelligent hologram, eh?"
Cope: "Precisely."
Cope introduces me to the two men sitting on my side. Exhibit A: Prettyboy.
"Evangeline, this is Doctor Klaus Krieger. Doctor Krieger, this is Evangeline."
Evangeline. Nobody but a fink calls me that. Fink's my name for a fed or a cop or any other spook type. Cope's voice is sincere, friendly, but firm. I could still hear the rain trickling outside, down the blue-glowing windows. I feel like I'm a detective in a vintage noir, about to get briefed on the case. How I wish I were color blind. Things would really be looking up.
Klaus. Blonde hair, about my height (five-eight). Quite muscular. Looks a great deal like Macaulay Culkin, except he's missing an eye, his right. He's got one of the new cyberpatches over it. I am certain it has an AR interface. He's got on a white t-shirt with an image of Friedrich Nietzche facepalming himself splattered across it. Blue jeans. Nikes. Awfully nihilistic attire for a doctor. Of what.
The fat guy's Holden. James Holden. Holden, me. Me, Holden. He says nothing, but he's got a look in his eyes. Fascination? No.
Shukutai's office has sh***y air conditioning, and as a result, sweat is already beginning to drip down my oval face. My eyes are dancing.

This is a blast - what do you intend to do with it?

This is what I call the chaos draft. It may suck, but at least I'll be getting somewhere.

You know I have been trying to write a novel for the last six months and I've got somewhere. (My spelling isn't usually this bad btw I've just been given a pile of PC bits since my Mac died, so I'm trying to figure PC's out for the first time
and for some reason the browser spell check doesn't work , yet.)

Ok something I recognise here. You've got all these themes running through your work , philosphical and broader questions . I got the same problem it sort of rips your brain apart sometimes trying to reduce it all down to coherence.

I'm in a group with published writers and the 'pre editor' , that's like the lady who checks stuff prior to submission
said I was concentrating too much on the theory and not enough on the characters. She said it was like writing a novel about the history of warp drive and NT readers are only vaguely interested in warp drive as a means of getting around a big universe.

Mine is much more pronounced than yours btw. My point is the mind-rip comes when you ahve many different themes to link together as well as bunch of characters wandering all over the place .

I was wondering how you dealt with this?

Meme

Yes it is an interesting juxtaposition. An institution devoted to making humans more "perfect" in a biological sense-by litereally redisigning them-- but the characters are so flawed as people - and flawed in different ways, and the company ittself might be corrupt.

It also suggests an interesting side theme. Maybe there is a mad scientist in the bowels of the company that striving to breed humans with perfect behavioral traits. Genetically engineered people who are complelled to be compulsively honest and compulsively altruistic. If he succeeds breeding a community of such persons - that would be an interesting community to observe in a novel.

I generally don't map out the themes and symbolism when I write a story. I just write. I just write, and the themes and symbolism become apparent afterward, when I look back at it, and think 'what point was I trying to make, here?'. Like, on the surface my post-cyberpunk novel-in-progress, Post Black, is, on the surface, about a group of hackers who get caught up in an international event, but underneath all that, its a story about coping, love, loyalty, devotion, sanity, personal growth, moral decisions, and our own mortality.

I'm trying both the planning approach and your write-as-you-go suggestion as I type this, each with a different story. The story I planned ahead is a short story while the one I'm winging is supposed to be a novel.

I've found that sometimes a combination of these approaches can be very effective. A couple of times I just wrote the first scene down without having the foggiest idea of how the rest of the tale would continue, but once the scene was finished, a plan for the story's remainder unrolled in my head.

Incidentally, Zokk, how far are you in your novel? My own has 2,122 words in it so far and the first chapter is more or less complete.

I'm up to about 35,000 words, so far; my goal is about 100,000. There are a few sections I may not be including in the final draft, so I'd say a more accurate estimate would be more like around 30,000 words so far.