An Absent Voice

When I set out writing this novel I began writing at the point that the protagonist is arriving, with family members, at a place he's never been before, noticing things and people that soon have him drawing on his years as an investigator.  As interesting as I found that scene, it was slow paced, and the protagonist was arriving after the incident that forms the core of the story.  Most of the people in town already know something has happened, and at least one may know all the facts. My protagonist is a late-comer (to me, as well as the story) and an outsider, and not everyone will be happy with his involvment.

I realised that I didn't know all the details of that incident, either.  I needed to write it down - to follow the thread of the narrative and see where it took me.  Who done it, and why?  So, I put pen to paper and set out.  A few pages into this I realised that there were people who had witnessed parts of what happened that night, even if they didn't immediately realise it. 

Though they wouldn't be entering the awareness of the protagonist for hours or even days, I had to write their stories, too, so I could understand what their relationship with the protagonist and other characters would be.  I ended up with four "preludes" to the opening chapter that I first wrote.  This is the one about the the character and the moments around which the story is centred.  It has been trimmed, refined, re-written, and trimmed again, and now feels like it should be the opening pages of the book.  What do you think?

SHORT CUT:

Perry laughed as he urged his utility up the steep, overgrown bush track; narrow escapes always filled him with an exultant energy.  The corrugations shook the Hilux sideways across the gravel surface towards the deep, rocky drain on the left.  He eased off the pedal and fought the shuddering steering wheel until the bonnet pointed up the centre of the track again, and then shoved the accelerator to the floor.  Driving with his window down, shivering and shirtless, he was listening through the wind in his ears for the sound that had sent him on this mad dash; the distinctive, burbling roar of a home modified exhaust, unlike any other car in the district.

A few minutes earlier that echoing, V-8 rumble had roused him from a warm bed and sent him running, boots, jeans, and shirt held close, into the cool night air. He had vaulted into his ute and made a crazy, lightless dash down the potholed wheel ruts that led from the house to the dirt road winding along the valley floor. Moonlight and memory got him to the road in one piece, just as the glow of head-lights silhouetted the trees on his right.

The roar of that exhaust was loud and clear as Perry threw the Hilux hard left and stamped on the accelerator, wanting desperately not to be snared by the approaching headlights.  Sharp white beams pierced the billowing dust cloud outside the farm gate as the Hilux fishtailed round the first bend.  He put his foot down and charged into the dappled shadows of the Eucalypts, hoping the kangaroos and wombats had the good sense to stay out of his way.  Behind him, the V-8 faltered briefly, and then roared even louder.

Three kilometres up the valley, Perry found the entry to his short cut and swung hard right.  The moonlight was enough for the pale, sandy road, but the narrow track up the forest-darkened gulley was invisible.  He flicked the parking lights on and lifted his foot a little.  That noisy exhaust was echoing louder again, though his rear-view mirror remained dark.  As he neared the head of the gulley, where the road hair-pinned right, a hint of a glow appeared, far behind; he took the bend fast, sliding on the loose surface, and his mirror was dark again..

Too late, he saw the cluster of potholes that stretched, trench like, across the track, black craters on a dark surface.  He hit the brakes, but the Hilux slammed into the sharp edge at the far side.  It bounced and lurched sideways towards dark tree trunks at the road's edge.  Perry coaxed it back into line and accelerated again, laughing as he realised that the low-slung vehicle behind him would never get through that last obstacle. 

Near misses piqued Perry's sense of adventure, but this one was too close.  A few minutes earlier, he would have been fatally oblivious to that warning rumble.  There could still be consequences in coming days, but Perry could talk his way out of almost any corner – especially over a beer or two. 

He hit the 'go' button on the CD player and began tapping the steering wheel as Highway to Hell thumped out of the speakers.  He turned his headlights on once he had put a forested ridge between himself and his pursuer, and pushed the ute as fast as the rutted, pot-holed track would allow, savouring the cooling tingle of the night air on his bare shoulder and chest, and tasting the joy of another little victory.

His headlights barely reached fifty metres ahead; just enough at this speed to see a roo or wombat if one leapt out of the shadowed undergrowth, but not enough to avoid hitting it.  The Hilux rattled and shuddered its way across the corrugations and protruding rocks, charging up a flickering, tree-lined tunnel of light.  Perry stood on the brakes again, surprised by a hairpin bend he'd thought was still a hundred metres ahead.  The ute slid onto its new course as Perry urged it towards the next hairpin – the third of five that would see him up onto the ridge, and closer to the little used trail that was his short cut home.  Near the top, he swung right onto a larger track – one used by the timber cutters and trail bike riders, mostly.

The forest thinned in that dryer country along the top of the ridge. A wallaby darted away from the noise and light as he began his charge down along the shallow saddle.  Perry braked carefully, looking for its mates, and the turn off that he knew should appear on his right any second.  It would be nice to be home before anyone tried to ring him. 

When the gap in the trees appeared, Perry braked hard and swung the nose of the vehicle sharply onto its new course. He had to fight for control as the tail swung out too far.  The left wheels found the soft edge before he had the Hilux straightened out, but an ominous, flapping growl announced that one of the back tyres was flat.  He pushed on up the slope to the level stretch beyond the first bend as the metal rim began to scrape on the gravel. 

The Hilux wobbled to a stop at the edge of the track as Bon Scott belted out the final phrases of Girls got Rhythm – the music died just before the engine did.  Perry slammed both hands on the steering wheel, then his forehead, and cursed.  He turned off the lights and listened, but apart from the creaking of cooling motor, and the soft, rhythmic thump of a departing kangaroo, the bush was silent.  He reached across to the passenger seat for his jeans, and began to dress, as a distant owl declared its presence.

The full moon was climbing higher as he jacked up the corner of the ute and glared at the shredded tyre.  The wheel nuts clung to the studs, screeching with each tug on the wheel brace.  It was the sort of noise people would hear miles away.  The spare fought with him as well, reluctant to leave its hiding place under the tray.  Months of dust had built up in every thread and track, jamming everything that should move freely.  Sweat dripped from his nose, and trickled down his ribs beneath his shirt, cooling to iciness by the end of its journey.

The spare, when he pulled it free, was flat.  He dragged it out, stood it up, and dropped it again.  It thumped lifelessly to the ground, and Perry gave it a good kick.  Flat as a tack and he'd left his compressor and tools at home before embarking on this night's adventure.

He looked up, startled by the faint whine of an engine, but the sound was gone as quickly as it had come.  He stood for a couple of minutes, listening and watching and working through his limited options.  He used this track because no one else did.  Now he needed a phone or an air pump, and neither looked likely.  Four hundred metres to the Ironstone Ridge track, and then a couple more kilometres pushing his spare tyre, would see him reach a couple of cabins perched on their isolated blocks on the spine of the ridge. 

He'd scouted these shacks two years ago, fruitlessly, he thought at the time, the day after a dance at the community hall.  He was certain, though, that one had a phone connected, and the other had a fairly well stocked workshop, so a compressor, or even a foot pump, was a chance.  He stood the spare up on its edge and gave it a push.  Half an hour later he wondered why he hadn't just driven to the cabins on the ruined tyre.  It would only have ruined the rim, after all; a very expensive rim, as he recalled.  Perry shrugged, cursed the thrifty genes his distant, Highland ancestors had bequeathed him, and kept pushing the flat tyre.

An hour later, he was still looking for the driveway to the first of the shacks.  How fast can a man walk when juggling a large flat tyre along an uneven dirt road?  Not as fast as he had expected, and uphill was easier, it turned out, than trying to restrain the wheel on the downhill sections. The skin on his palms was raw and stinging and his shoulders and back were threatening to go on strike.

Finally, a trace of pale sand shone faintly between two trees on his right.  He stopped in the middle of the moonlit road and stared into the dark tunnel. Fifty metres further along the road, he could see a glimmer of white painted rocks that marked another property entrance.  Perry held the tyre upright with one hand and searched his memory, trying to remember which one had the shed full of tools. 

Both shacks huddled under the trees, fifty metres from the track, but the moonlight was glinting on something metallic part way down the driveway closest to him.  Would someone be here on a Thursday?  He straightened as well as he could and rubbed the small of his back before moving on. 

The tyre had rolled only a metre or so when an engine roared into life.  Blinding white light stabbed out of the driveway as a vehicle accelerated straight at him.  Perry turned and let the tyre fall as he ran towards the trees at the far edge of the track.   The hard surface of the track changed to soft soil and leaves, and low prickly bushes clutched at his legs as the light and noise surged towards him, and gravel crunched as the vehicle skidded to a stop just short of the fallen spare wheel.

The voice that yelled his name was not one he wanted to hear.

Inconsistent Voices

The feeling of victory has faded, the next battle has commenced.  The process of editing and revising is now under way - and what a task it is!  In many ways, getting the story written is the easy part, even when it did not always feel that way. It is when I sit down to revise and edit that brain fatigue becomes a much larger problem than it did during the first draft.

Voices - which one for the narration - which one for which character.....  which characters are more important?  When the story was flowing onto paper or screen, there was a no time to consider "voice" or "style" - the important thing was to get down the facts and conversations as they appeared, and the voice happened instinctively.

In some places, the flow was so smooth that the style was elegant, the language was evocative, and the images were clear; elsewhere, it was clunky and flat.  I knew where I was going, more or less, but the prose was wooden, the conversations between characters were stilted or forced.

In some places, narrative and conversation are sparse but good, almost in the manner of Hemingway while in other parts, a degree of poetry has entered the flow, and the prose and dialogue become almost lyrical - at least, until it becomes overly ornate, veering towards florid.  Re-reading the draft, I can't help wondering if whatever I might have been reading the night before had entered into my work, much like the way that the spices and flavours of supper can haunt the bathroom the next morning.  I suppose such flow-through is unavoidable, but is it good?

In this novel, the first character to come to mind - the one who provided me with the spark for theme and story - is dead very early in the story, glimpsed only briefly.  He never speaks directly from the page, instead, his words and actions are known by the traces, even the scars, they leave in the lives and words of the other characters.

The character first conceived of as the protagonist - the person who will pursue the truth - remains important, and I have a solid image of him in my mind.  However, two other characters appear, at first in minor roles, but soon become equally significant and interesting - they need their voices and their back stories too.

Inconsistencies need to be located and eliminated, or smoothed out - unless, of course, they are essential ones in the sense of the different versions of an event told by witnesses, or different assessments of a character by other characters.

Are the clues too obvious?  Or are there too few?  It is a very delicate balance between leaving the reader feeling that the ending is just right, even if unpredicted, and feeling that it is so "out of left field" as to be unfair to them and unsatisfactory/illogical/just plain wrong for the story.  No matter how illogical and inexplicable our real world may seem and feel, our reader expects us, our characters, and our story - especially the ending - to "make sense".

It leaves me wanting to bury the file for the novel and start writing short stories again - quick, simple and complex at the same time, and satisfying in that a job started in one hour can be finished in the next.

But that would be giving up on something that still has a lot of potential (not to mention that bane of the economist and psychologist - "sunk cost"), so, despite the battle cries of the warring bands of grandchildren who are circling my study, and the roaring engine of the mechanic - who knows what he is doing to that car? - only twenty metres away, it is "once more into the breach, dear pen, once more, and tighten up the narrative with our prosey skill"