Writer in Motion is a writing project that shows how a short story progresses “from prompt to polished,” and the rule is that the first draft is posted as a first draft. No editing allowed. I struggle with sharing work that isn’t finished, so it’s a great exercise for me. I already know what I need to do to cut/change/update some of this, so I’ll be ready for my first round of revisions next week—but I have a long way to go! I couldn’t decide who these characters were, but now I have ideas and just have to cut, adjust, and re-write. Prompt photo and first draft are below.
Pssst: I loved WIM so much last year that I jumped on board and joined the team this year.
The Prompt Image
First Impression
Whoa ok there are feelings here. My first instinct was something related to hiding parts of yourself. Who you are, or what you think. I don’t know why WIM always makes me go all dark and secretive, like last year’s project, but here we are. Anyway, I rolled with the secrets aspect and wrote this very messy Zero Draft over a couple of writing sessions. First, in the car driving up to see my parents (hello, carsickness) then home while deliriously sleepy, and then in a couple of after-work writing sprints. I’ve left my <<notes to self>> in where I dropped them as I took writing breaks. You’re getting the full Zero Draft experience here!
Oh yeah and there was the fun moment where I kept getting a (not responding) error over and over, and I couldn’t save or copy anything. So I took a screenshot and saved that so I didn’t lose my… 75 words. Boom, ingenuity.
ZERO DRAFT: Untitled Writer in Motion 2021
Contained. Restrained. Locked down and under control. That’s the one rule. Keep it together, no matter what. But “Keep it together” implied a semblance of “together” existed. Which it didn’t.
It never really had, but she couldn’t admit that. Not now. Not after making it through to this point. They’d screened and tested and asked question. after question. after mind-probing question.
“Who are you,” and “why are you here,” and “who knows your location?” Keep the secrets, share the imperative, don’t let the truth slip. The goal was to make it through to the end tipping anyone off to the fact that she didn’t belong. Not there, not in the building and not behind those gates.
The “get in” part of the plan was easy. She slipped in undetected and blended in like she’d been asked. That’s where it all went sideways.
The “get in” part was easier than the “keep it together” part. She was out of her league. She knew it, but so far she’d ensured they didn’t know it.
Until now.
“I heard a little secret,” the person with the green gloves said. They circled her, arms clasped in front of them as if they were feigning a trustworthy personality.
“Rumor has it there are a lot of secrets around here.”
“This one’s a very particular secret. Belonging to a very sneaky individual.”
“So it must hold a particular power, this secret you know.”
They grunted, then wrung their green-gloved hands menacingly. Anything to keep the power in the situation. Fear and coercion were tools of the trade and they wielded the tools well.
<<A world where the powerful can read minds and they deal in secrets. Secrets have power, secrets are currency? Secrets get you things the more secrets you have the more you can buy. But the secrets aren’t so much secrets but ideas that were taken from someone’s head and held in the taker’s head until it’s worthwhile to “spend” it. Are they hired by someone to do it, like spies but for secrets? Or is it all underground? Who buys the secrets?>>
“You know this secret, as well.”
“Do I?”
They tightened their gloved grip and their lips turned ever-downward. “You should. I plucked it from the deepest areas of your mind. Beneath layer upon layer of misdirection and cloudy half-truths. I had to dig deep to find your truth, but it was there. Hidden beneath layers. Someone trained you well.”
“Trained me?” If I could have been so lucky…
“It doesn’t matter how tucked away they are, I can sift through the fog until I find enough. I can undo you with a whisper.”
“You haven’t found anything.”
“<<They say some secret thing here that proves they know things.>>”
Cross denial off the list of probable tactics. She’d picked up the skills here and there, learned to hold her secrets close—though she had never been lucky enough to have been formally taught, not like the person with the green gloves had. She only knew how to keep her thoughts unreachable, untouchable.
Unsellable.
Her mind was granite, but their words were the rain. A relentless beating of raindrops in the form of accusations and misdirection. But, no matter how hard the rain poured, there was always something left of the stone. Pieces and sand rather than boulders, but pieces would do.
If they had enough secrets to sort through, they couldn’t find out about him. Keeping her thoughts steady, silent, and buried beneath the irrelevant brain fog she focused on producing was the only way for him to remain undiscovered.
“Someone’s not supposed to be here,” he crooned. “Someone got mixed up with some very bad people and made a very, very bad decision. Tell me of the promises you made.”
She’d promised so many things, but only one mattered. As memories tried to spring up like crocus in early spring, she conjured a shadowed figure to bury the tiny, wriggling thought beneath more memories. Irrelevant thoughts, insignificant faces, a back and forth of wishes and dreams being beaten away by regret. The battlefield inside her head was always morphing as needed, but the exhaustion was going to win over. Slowly, thought after thought slipped—but not by accident. Hers was a calculated effort.
“I knew you couldn’t hold it back.” Their teeth flashed in a satisfied sneer.
She resisted as her mind tried to shift, to think about the one thing she had buried, had forced herself to forget. She held the image of the company in her mind instead, forced distress at the thought of sacrificing them. To survive. To live. To keep her promise.
“Ah ha. There’s only one doorway in the city with a view like that,” they said. “Is that the location, then? Is that where they’re hiding, selling their secrets to the other side. And for what, a moment of glory?”
“You only despise glory because you’ve never had it,” she said. “Might like it, given the opportunity.”
They spat on the floor. “Betrayal is despicable. It’ll only take moments to tear the building to shreds and rip each of your accomplices to pieces.”
She let flashes of memories slip through, one by one. Fuzzy, then clearer, then clearer, until it was obvious which faces they needed to pick out in the crowd. The least likely. Each of the people who had betrayed her along the way. The men who laughed and turned her away when she had nothing but the clothes on her back. Those who had shunned her for her uncanny knack for knowing. Nothing specific, and nothing intentional. Just knowing.
Those who had taken him in the first place. Who had called him too dangerous and too untrustworthy for freedom. She’d kept his location a secret, and had given the memories of their former associates. Turned the thoughts over to the enemy, because her friend had become the enemy.
“It was a good fight. Not a fair one, by any means,” they laced their gloved fingers and stretched their arms above their head, “but a good one. We’ll be back to end this when we’re sure we’ve extracted all of the information we need.”
They left with a chuckle, cocky and self-assured. She wiggled her bound wrists to finish the untying process that had begun the moment they finished the knot, then tugged the rope between her hands to test the strength. A sufficient tool for defense, if necessary.
She shook away the fog she’d created in her mind, then pulled forward the memory she’d risked everything to keep. Where he’d hidden, and where the ones they’d saved were waiting. He’d promised her freedom in exchange for one final favor. Because only she could deceive this way. Only she could hold a secret so closely.
But she knew he wasn’t going to keep his end of the deal, which is why she’d planted ideas elsewhere—and they weren’t going to arrive at building to find the company unaware.
The company was ready and waiting, and willing to raze the building with the opponents locked inside if it meant staying alive. Then, they’d find him, and he wouldn’t survive. With him dead, she’d be free.
When it’s kill or be killed, sometimes it’s better to bury the biggest secrets beneath the ones that keep you alive.
