Well okay. Just remember that someone (who wasn't me) asked for this. The following stilted and overly dramatic prose is from the first novel I ever managed to complete. It's so old, there are two spaces after every period. This book never met an adverb it didn't like. In fact, you know that meme about the overly attached girlfriend? Yeah. That's this book with adverbs. I love the fact that the characters go from 0 to 60 emotionally. It's a total soap opera and I keep it around because it so tickles me. The scene below is the first meeting of the hero and heroine. We're on maybe page 5 of the manuscript.
Casey emerged from her shower
feeling entirely refreshed. Wrapped in
her towel, she returned to her room and
toweled her hair dry. She dressed in a
leisurely fashion, listening to a song that had been running through her mind
all day long. Running her fingers
through her hair to calm the curling copper strands, Casey unlatched her abused
guitar case and seated herself on the bed to bend over it. She plucked out a quiet melody, then altered
it when it didn't quite match what she heard in her head. She realized she wouldn't be able to blithely
tuck her love of music out of the way for the convenience of Sonya's
brother. On the other hand, she didn't
want to unduly antagonize anyone either.
Casey simply decided she'd have to be careful. With a smile, she repeated the melodic line
she'd just created and ventured to put some words to it. Shaking her head, she decided her songwriting
talent needed considerable polishing.
The door to Casey's room slammed open. Startled, she jumped. With a discordant twang, a string broke,
snapping back to slash her hand.
"Damn it!" She swore,
glaring up at the door. Her eyes
widened. The most alarmingly handsome
man she'd ever seen stood glowering at her from the doorway. She knew him instantly. She'd seen Brennen James in concert once
herself and owned more than one of his wildly successful albums.
"Do you always slam into
someone else's room without knocking?"
She charged, her voice clipped and short from the pounding of her
heart. "You made me break a
string. Thank you very much."
"What are you doing
here?" He demanded, eyeing her with
a cold, searching gaze.
"Not that it's any of your
business," she returned stung by his imperious tone, "I am here to
help Sonya with her wedding. Oh,
damn," she swore again, catching sight of the bloody line along the back
of her hand. She grabbed her wrinkled
tee shirt and blotted the blood away.
"Let me make something very
clear to you, Miss..."
"Casey Griffin."
"Let me make something very
clear to you Miss Griffin. I am the only
musician in this house. I will not
tolerate your musical pretensions..."
He began.
Casey bristled, enraged. Setting her precious guitar carefully aside,
she stood and stalked up to meet him. To
her irritation, she found she had to look up to glare at him. "Listen, you jerk," she shot
back. "You have no idea who I am or
what I do. My musical pretensions are
none of your concern. And until you know
what type of musician I am, you'd probably feel less like an ass in the very
near future if you kept your mouth shut now."
She bit her lip, wondering at the
wisdom of snapping at her friend's brother.
Besides, it wasn't as if she could hold a musical candle to the
man. With a sigh, Casey decided she
should probably have kept her temper under better control.
"What amazing green eyes you
have. And that red hair," he
observed, his tone amused, but still not terribly friendly. "I assume that explains your frightful
temper. You look silly in purple,"
he observed. "You should wear
green."
Casey stared at him, stupefied. She wondered if he'd bothered to pay
attention to anything she'd said. It
only irritated her all over again.
"I look like a damn wood elf if I
wear green," she groused. "And
no, my hand is fine. Thank you for your
concern. Get out of my room."
Brennen James, a man Casey had
admired and adored since she'd purchased his first album, stood at her bedroom
door and laughed at her. Casey gritted
her teeth and turned her back on him.
She returned to her guitar and carefully set about removing the broken
string from its key.
The entire book is like this. So while I managed to write a complete novel, the story never saw the light of day. Editors rightly pointed out that this story has no actual conflict - it's all bickering. The great thing about those rejections was that I got actual REASONS for the rejection. Armed with those, I could learn what internal versus external conflict was. And then I could write a second novel that managed to get it wrong in even more spectacular fashion, but that's another post.
At least I can't offer up my very first attempt at fiction - the 15 year old heroine who was an expert horsewoman, an expert swordswoman, and a great tactician fighting pirates to preserve her father's reign. Oh. And she had a black panther named Scott as a pet. <shrug> Yeah, I dunno. I was twelve and it all sounded like a good idea at the time.
