Thursday, June 3, 2010

Dream Scene/Beach Scene Blogfests – Dawn’s Rise

Dream Scene/Beach Scene Blogfests – Dawn’s Rise

Thanks to the great Amalia T. and the powerful Rachel Batemen for hosting the Dream Sequence and the Beach Scene blogfests. I have a scene that (hopefully) satisfies both!

Turns out that Steam Palace has neither beaches NOR dreams (what’s wrong with me?). So I had to go back a couple WIPs to Dawn’s Rise. Here, our heroine has just fallen and hit her head, and she wakes up to experience some weird dreams, one of which occurs on the beach!

 swaying-treesWhere am I?

Towering fir trees menaced her, extending up to the sky. A mat of soft moss tickled her fingers.

Great, I’m dead.

Dawn gesticulated and then poked her skull. “Location. Map me. Call Rose.” Her implants remained silent and blank.

“Come on!”

A chilling breeze rustled the trees, prickling her skin and showering Dawn with needles. She rubbed her arms and stood, studying the verdant forest for signs of civilization.

I’m not dead. Trees bent and branches snapped from a sudden gale. I’ve seen this before. A tree splintered in a loud crack and slammed the ground mere feet from Dawn. Wind rumbled and moaned.

Dawn scrambled among the swaying trunks. A gap under downed tree beckoned. Dawn huddled, shivering in the freezing air. “Come on, this is enough!” Her breath blew clouds of steam as she panted.

The wind snatched her words away. Trees bent and creaked, snapped and fell. A tremendous rush of air tugged her, clawed her, and then yanked her up into the sky. Trees scattered like twigs blasted by a leaf blower. A hail of snow whited out the world, clinging to her with numbing cold.

A vast cityscape appeared. The slush coating her limbs slid off. Yet Dawn flew, suspended in the air. Her heart pounded and her arms swam through the sky, seeking anything to grasp.

What’s happening to me? It’s a dream, it must be. Or a premonition. She gasped for air as the city sat far below. It’s happening again. The night monsters. The violent days are coming, days of disaster and death. She swallowed. Her medplants had kept the terrors at bay for years. No. Not coming. The truth of it slammed her bones. Those days are here.

She covered her eyes, but the vision remained. The murmur of normal city life bubbled up, cars and planes and construction. Picturesque skyscrapers soared above the nearby clouds. Her gut clenched. Those days are here. “Nonononono. Please! I don’t want to see it!”

The spires swayed, shudders rippling along their flanks. The glass blew out in a haze of white, and then the concrete exploded into clouds of dust. Spires toppled sideways; others sank into the streets in boiling cauldrons of death. Dawn reached out as if she could grasp the towers and pull them back. Screams and cries shivered Dawn’s soul as the city disintegrated into dust in a massive quake. “No, no! Stooooppp!”

Dawn twisted and wriggled but nothing ended the destruction. She plummeted.

parasailingBurning sand seared her skin. Dawn jumped to her feet and hotfooted it to the shade of a palm tree, blowing on her blistered hands. A turquoise ocean lapped against a white sandy beach, but Dawn recalled this scene from the blanket-tearing dreams of her childhood. The sun blazed overhead. It’s here. It’s here. Nothing can be done. The low hum of a motorboat pulled her gaze to the ocean where a parasailor practiced, his rainbow-printed chute billowing out behind him. She studied the figure, an element she had never dreamed of before. The smell of salt wafted on the light breeze. Dread crept up her spine. The parasailor’s chute snapped and he plunged.

“No!” Dawn raced down the beach, ignoring the blistering of her feet. This is a sign, a signal. He must be rescued. She plunged into the waves, the warm waters supporting her body. The waves grew in size and force, until she battled boiling waters. A vast curling wave collapsed, driving her down into the depths. Where is he? Where is he? Burning liquid consumed her lungs as her breath escaped.

Dawn convulsed, seawater pouring out of her mouth. She dripped with liquid and coughed up more. An ugly landscape surrounded her. Smoldering ruins lay crumpled on the ground, nothing but empty skeletons of buildings and vehicles in all directions. A murmur arose. Huddled figures approached her. “Dawn,” they cried. “Dawn, Dawn, save us.”

They sported terrible injuries, weeping sores and matted blood, with only primitive wrappings to protect them. Their ribs protruded through their tight skin, and their eyes sunk into their skulls. They approached Dawn, their hands reaching towards her. Dawn jumped and backed away. Her legs shook and her breath wheezed and gurgled.

“Please, stop. Stay away from me, I can’t help you. This isn’t real. None of this is real.” But it is. This is all real. Their hands grasped her clothes and the stench of unwashed bodies and infected wounds sickened her.

Blinding light swept the sky. Pure heat slammed the ruined city. The supplicants’ flesh ignited, burning them to skeletons. Dawn’s own hands flamed to bone and dust, yet she continued to witness the scene.

The ground shook and an ocean half a mile high tumbled across the landscape. It washed over the city, covering it in black waters, and then receded, leaving nothing but an empty plain of mud in its wake. It has come. It has come. All this has come. The Days are here.

Dawn screamed.


  1. Wow. It snatched me up and bore me away. Great dream sequence, Andrew. Mine I'm afraid is a little long. Some surprise, huh? Roland

  2. Apocalypse now. Vivid and intense. If I had a prophecy dream like that I think I'd kill myself rather than face the reality.

    Awesome visuals, using all the senses. Completely sucked me in the the very end.


  3. Great imagery and description. Great entry for the blogfest.

  4. frightening and a little creepy. great stuff.

  5. Your details are so amazing. The pine needles falling, the wind snatching her words...the whole forest seemed to be a monster. Tugging and clawing and yanking at her.

    The beach scene and the descriptions of the weeping sores, also very powerful. Great job.

  6. This was very powerful and detailed. I thought some of the early paragraphs could be trimmed a little to quicken the pace and pull the tension tauter, but overall it was great to read!

  7. Wow, Andrew--this is amazing stuff. There is so much going on, I wish I could read it from the start so I feel as if I'm not missing anything! Great job!

  8. OMgosh! that was amazing. I watched it like a movie in my head as I read. Great job!

  9. Awesome. The night terrors described as night monster? Great idea. To a young person those dreams take on a persona of their own.
    Very descriptive and evocative.

  10. This was amazing. Very detailed, very compelling and suspenseful. Excellent writing.

  11. Great imagery, taking the reader from a chilling breeze to boiling water.

    - Eric

  12. Thanks everyone!
    In the past, most critiquers hated the scene, saying it was pointless. So when I went to edit it a bit before I posted it up here, I figured out some of the issues. Aside from stylistic woes such as telling and exposition, the scene didn't really have a point. So I fixed the style problems and then added parts in italics, which I hope shows that this is really a recurrent dream/vision. I think I may need to add a bit on why she thinks these things are imminent.
    I was wondering if anyone noticed that the four disasters are Earth(quake), Wind(storm), Fire(from the sky), and Water(the beach scene) (but not in that order)? I don't think I ever intentionally wrote it that way but I noticed it at some point.

    In more ancient mythological writing, the Herald sometimes come to the Hero in his dreams in the form of a deity. I think dreams overall can be used as Heralds of things to come. I wonder if there's a way to reincorporate that into modern literature. The only dream-type scene I have in Steam Palace is a nightmare, but its purpose is to illustrate the stakes involved in the upcoming scenes...played wrong, the nightmare becomes real. But it was way too graphic to post here.

  13. Hi,

    Great sense of atmosphere and scene setting!


  14. Very intense scene, and well described. I almost wonder if, depending on the rest of the novel, this would even work better if split into the four elements as you describe above. The scene didn't feel too long, but I like the idea of more being revealed as the story progresses. Again, this is based on my essentially knowing nothing else of the novel; I just wonder if all of these great images piled together is too much all at once. Regardless, another thing I liked is how you set the stakes, even if I wonder whether it would function better in the longer piece if the reader were left to draw their own conclusions. I guess not so much based on the comments you've already received saying the scene was pointless. Anyway, great job!

  15. Poor Dawn, I really felt her she is forced to watch the end unfold and is powerless to stop it. Terrifying. Excellent imagery and parallels between the trees snapping and the parasailers suit snapping.

  16. Wow. Amazing imagery. If I had a dream where everything fell to ruin, I'd scream, too.

  17. Great imagery in this piece! I think this came across with great clarity, even while it maintained the dreamy quality, which is kind of a hard balance sometimes. Nicely done and Thanks for Participating!!

  18. Very enthralling, the imagery was just amazing! With everything that goes on it feels like I haven't missed a beat! I'm glad I got to yours. Thanks for sharing

  19. Great scene! The added bits in italics defiantely work well.

  20. Nice blogfest combo. They work well together to make a great scene with a good source of tension. It's well done.

    But now that I've read a number of the blogfest posts, I'm curious: What's with the screaming. So many people have dreams that involve screaming. It works for your story, just something that caught my attention.

  21. That was really intense. I am SO glad I don't dream like this :P Really well done. I enjoyed it a lot.

  22. Just dropped in again to see how you were doing. Hope all is well for you, and your novel dreams are closer to coming true. Roland

  23. @EJ: Hadn't thought about that parallel. The cord snapping is actual a metaphor for something else but that works too

    @Tina: The most interesting dreams are the nightmares.

    @Amalia: It's more of a "vision" than a dream. She got hit in the head so she's not in a normal sleep mode.

    @Hayley: Thanks!

    @Tesse: I've been working on getting inside my character's heads.

    @Dawn: Because without the screaming...the dream just continues. It's like waking up before you hit the ground...

    @Rebecca: I unfortunately dream about crap like this. Not very often, but I do.

    @Roland: Doing well. I'm also on Facebook/Twitter/Google talk/various IM systems if you want to chat sometime. Links on the side.

  24. : )

    Very vivid and intense. Thanks for sharing.


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