hi yes tell us more about there was a falling out!
oh my goodness. now this is an old WIP i can get behind. the ramble is going to be extremely long because there’s a lot to say and i have no filter. there’s also some fun stuff about insect poison that goes into this so yay!
content warnings for fictional murder and drowning
this novel was my very first nano project, written in november 2017. for those of you who might not know this snazzy little bit of insect poison lore, this is actually the origin of insect poison!
there was a falling out (twafo) was written in two different timelines, switching point of view every other chapter. the first was from a 3rd person narrator telling us the story of a boy named robert quell (wtf kind of name is quell? i don’t know, ask 14 year old me who needed a last name on novemeber 1st), who would later go on to become one of the most infamous serial killers of all time, the very first person he murdered being his twin sister, ruby (yeah, no). the second point of view, written in present tense 1st person, was from the point of view of a teenager who he would, in his adult life, kidnap (along with her friends, several of whom he’d... y’know.., kill).
while the prose in this story is obviously not up to my current standards or level, i’m actually really proud of this story. i was going through a really difficult point in my life at the time, was doing choir, a musical, FFA (if you don’t know what that is, i was basically spending 6 hours a week writing + memorizing speeches about agriculture), and normal school stuff all at the same time at that point! i would go to school, go to choir rehearsal, go to FFA practice, and then go home, do homework, and then write over a 1000 words every weeknight. i literally don’t know how i did it. the existence of this book, no matter how weak the characters or cliché the prose, is a miracle in itself.
so... somehow this turned into insect poison.
this book never really left me, exactly. this story and one other one from that point in my life were ones i really rushed (which i don’t necessarily regret! taking my time back then would have bored me and i would’ve given up), and never let the concepts solidify fully. my perception of robert would be different every time i thought about the book post-writing it, and i would realize he wasn’t who i had originally planned. after that, i knew i’d have to re-write it someday, and it wasn’t just going to be about some random serial killer who’s first kill was his twin sister. that scene ended up becoming the shape of insect poison, but even the bones of that scene would change. ruby would become ramona, ramona would become the “instigator”, the lines between accidental death and murder would become confusing for everyone involved. and oh yeah, there’s ghosts now??
overall this book is a mess, has a lot of logical fallacies, and has 2-dimensional characters galore. i really thought “the more the merrier” and just added someone new every time i didn’t know what to do. and by that i mean every other page. but at the same time, i really loved it and in some ways, still do, because it gave me insect poison. and even though that book is also a hot mess, it made me realize that i don’t actually hate writing prose, i just hate writing traditional story structures and young adult
so.. yeah. i guess this is the part where i put an excerpt, isn’t it? (also, i tried to give the 3rd person narrator a personality but it didn’t work. i know all of my followers are too nice to bully 14-year old me but wow... i deserved it)
Some might say that if Robert Quell’s father would have left for work just a little bit earlier that morning, the course of the young boy’s life may have taken a completely different turn. However, I disagree and I personally believe that the young boy’s fate was written, if not set, in stone.
Tuesday. Cloudy, most likely going to rain in the afternoon, a great day for watching movies on the couch or looking through old stuff in the attic kind of a Tuesday. You know the one, I’m sure. In the Quell family, these Tuesdays did not exist as they do in your home or mine. Everything is different in the Quell family. Everything is slightly off.
those are the very first sentences! i’m too scared to read more :)
