Practice novel draft

[Sol Soleil]

I thought I might as well share a little of my writing. This isn't my actual novel, just a practice; I got given the idea by a friend and ran with it. It has no title (I doubt I'll try to get it published) and you'll probably guess the genre a mile away. But, here's the first chapter.

(Split into a few parts because I don't want to post it all in one post and find out there's a word limit. It's also my first time writing in first-person.)

Madeline Adams and I grew up together in Olden, a town at least an hour out into the countryside. It's one of those quiet places where people like to go to and raise their children in, and in which horror films like to have everything go to hell in. Olden had a long main street where all the stores were, with the school and the council chambers at the head of the street. The houses were nice; painted pastel, with low, chain-link or wooden board fences. It was a tidy town framed by wheat fields on three sides and woods on one and Madeline and I had been neighbors with our homes turning their backs upon the woods.

Madeline was a pretty girl who liked to paint; she had a mop of bright orange curls and brown eyes. She had freckles, smears of watercolor on her cheeks, and Play-doh under her little nails. I had blue eyes and straight black hair that I chopped off into a flapper bob when I went to the city. I used to sneak downstairs after bedtime and hide in a corner to watch the horror movies my parents were watching, getting caught out when I laughed at the ridiculous monsters on the screen. Nothing scared Madeline and I, and we would often be reckless with our play. When our parents weren't looking we would see who would go the furtherest into the woods, daring each other with bets of sweets. We never went any further than the abandoned lumber camp, where we would look through the high fence at the old, neglected sheds, dreaming of the day we got big enough to dare climb over and explore. We would run home after that and Madeline would paint the monster we believed to have eaten all the missing lumberjacks, with me prompting her to add more eyes and teeth until we ended up with a blob of grotesque. After we were about eleven we stopped going into the woods; Madeline said that we'd seen all we needed to see and we wouldn’t frustrate our parents and go out there any more. I agreed, more troubled that I couldn't remember how we'd gotten back from the lumber camp to the back fence than anything else

We remained best friends all through schooling, completely inseparable partners-in-crime. Only after graduation did we really part, though we hadn't planned to be parted for long. Madeline wanted to stay in Olden a little longer and paint some landscapes to sell, and I was going to go to the city, go to college, and find a gallery that could house her masterpieces. After she had sold enough art, we saw ourselves living in a fancy apartment, dressing like Coco Chanel, and fluttering through the glittery, arty circles of city society. Of course, we probably would have been brought very brutally down to earth during our first weeks in the big town, but we had that typical, young, country-girl optimism that would have stayed alive until broken. And so, armed with that optimism, I had left for the city and the last that I saw of Madeline was of her reflection in my rear-view mirror; waving, her orange hair being tossed around her face by the wind, and stains of sunflower yellow paint upon the smock over her summer dress.

That was six years ago. We had lost contact after four, the fault of my job than of any strain between us (I hadn't talked to my parents since joining the PDPA, either). I expected to run into her in the city sometime; Olden was too small to entertain her forever and the city I was in was small enough that I would have seen her in passing; maybe bumping into her as I got coffee for my office mates, or I would have exited the dingy occult book-store I frequented to see her standing wistfully in front of the small art gallery across the road, hair as unruly and pretty as ever.

What I didn't expect was opening to page three of the newspaper that had been rammed, half shredded, through the mail-slot of my apartment to find a photo of her painting a mural on the wall of Olden's diner. My stomach leapt, thinking it an article on a rising, talented artist, and my fingers had slipped to my phone, nails running over the buttons which would dial her number, planning to break the diligent anonymity my job demanded to congratulate her and laugh as she scolded me for not calling her. But upon seeing the article, the phone, and my stomach, dropped:

[Sol Soleil]

YOUNG WOMAN DISAPPEARS WITHOUT TRACE. Madeline Adams, a resident of Olden has disappeared after leaving home to go to a local park. Janice Adams, the woman's mother, called police...

Disappeared.

I read the rest of the article in a hurry; she went to the local park, a new habit of hers. Mrs Adams had called the police after Madeline hadn't returned by nightfall. The police thought she had run away; she had taken a bag Mrs Adams said Madeline had filled with things – warm clothes, money, survival gear. She had been gone for a few days now; the end of the article was filled with pleas for her to come back home, as well as the number for the missing person's hotline. I sat there, numbly staring at the article; not reading the words but staring at the columns of text. Disappeared. Madeline had disappeared.

Something in the back of my head shook itself awake and proceeded to shake the rest of my brain. I read the article again and stopped around the middle; one line stood out among all the others. Miss Adams, a painter, had recently taken up photography, focusing on the woodlands and the abandoned lumber camp near to the town. Madeline had avoided parks and woodlands – especially those near the lumber camp - for years and she was a stubborn woman who wouldn't touch anything ever after deeming it not suitable; for her to start going back there was unlike her. The photography too. She never liked photography... why did she pick it up? I drummed my fingers on the table... something wasn't right.

I picked up my phone again and dialed a number. As it rang, I looked at her picture. Everybody said Madeline was a late bloomer; her face had become more pointed and her hair was tamer since she had been in my rear-view mirror. She was still the same, though; she was smiling the same smile she'd made when we'd climbed trees aged five. Looking at her picture, I realized how much I'd missed that smile.

“Morning, Susan. I take it you've read the paper.” John Averton, my supervisor and somewhat mentor, greeted. Despite being six-thirty in the morning he was at his desk, overseeing the paperwork and cases of the twenty agents under him. Like many of the older members of the PDPA, he lived at headquarters. I nodded, affirming his assumption, forgetting he couldn't see the gesture.

“Yes, sir... I have.”

“And, I take it, that you want to investigate?”

I almost interrupted him, “Yes.”

There was a pause from the other end of the line. I could hear him move things around his desk. My eyes hadn't left Madeline's picture; I wondered if John had gone to my desk and held up the picture I had of the two of us slurping milkshakes in the diner to the picture in the paper, checking to see if this Madeline Adams was my Madeline Adams. My partner, Alex, would have known the minute he saw the picture; he'd heard enough stories about Madeline to spot her from space. He never read the papers, though; the daily woes of a different species didn't interest him.

“I'll see what I can do. If anything, I'll be able to somebody down to Olden.” John took a breath. “I'll get Kevin to do the coffee run. You just come in, alright?”

“Okay... sir.”

I heard him give a small chuckle before hanging up. I tossed the phone onto the couch, still staring at the picture. I skimmed the article one last time before getting up, going to toss the cold dregs of coffee from my mug into the sink. This behavior was nothing like Madeline. She had never ever contemplated running away; even when her parents had divorced and scared her with their constant yelling she hadn't even run over to my house. She had tried to face something - like she had faced the fact her parents disliked each other - but this time, it had scared her enough to make her run. I grabbed my uniform from the rack where I'd hung it the night before, stealing one last glance at the article.

I was going to find her. And woe betide what had scared her when I found it.

[Compcat]

This is pretty interesting. I definitely would want to read more. I have a couple bits of advice though.

I don't think it's necessary to immediately jump into description of physical features, saying "I had blue eyes and she had red hair" and stuff. That always comes across as pretty amateurish to me, since it's always the impulse of the writer but never the interest of the reader (at least at that point in the story). I think that's only important if it's relevant to what's happening in the story, such as later when you wrote: "And so, armed with that optimism, I had left for the city and the last that I saw of Madeline was of her reflection in my rear-view mirror; waving, her orange hair being tossed around her face by the wind, and stains of sunflower yellow paint upon the smock over her summer dress." I think that worked pretty well, and if the reader didn't know what she looked like until that point, then it's like a pleasant surprise to now have an image, but for it not to seem so arbitrary.

Also, I think there were some moments toward the beginning when you used the passive voice a bit too much. I understand why you were doing that, because the narrator was recalling her youth, but it still causes it to drag a bit.

Also I noticed a couple of grammar issues and wonky sentences, but nothing too glaring. Cool stuff, overall. Keep at it.

[Sol Soleil]

Thanks for the advice, Compcat. I'll try to get that stuff ironed out in later drafts. I might also post a bit of the second chapter when I get round to it.