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Apologia


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Hi, all. This is an introductory passage I wrote recently. I'm curious how it functions as the beginning of a story. Does it intrigue? Does it fall flat? Any feedback is welcome. Thanks.

 

-COEM

 

=======

 

I am rarely now stirred to take up my pen; the wear of years and many battles, few won, has wound me down, and though my dreams bear me nightly back into that vital fray, my days are something different. After fourteen years I have grown used to my retirement. When I started on that last retreat, not quite chosen, I saw my end before me as a body in an armchair. It was no surprise, following as it did on the nature of our cause and the enemies it raised; but it was a blow. Quiet is a dreadful thing. It is no balm for my soul, and I think it never shall be; though perhaps I may find something in it yet.

 

The seasons do something to us all and today this old controversialist has little left to say. I should go on turning over my own thoughts in safe solitude till the end, were it not for the painful news that has lately come to my ear. I mean the recent string of calumnies leveled in the press against a noble man, a friend dearer to me than life. Thomas Rane needs no defense, as if a mouse could defend a lion. His true deeds are known to all, though they now meet the public in a muddy admixture, contending with these fresh libels concerning his private motives and relations. To the last they are false; nothing could be more false; yet what could be more expected? No prophet is accepted in his own country. When he died springtime last I mourned him dearly, though in our mutual grief I remember telling Henry Rowe it was a miracle it had not happened sooner. In the final months there was a sense unspoken among us that, despite his vigor, Thomas was not long for the world. His fall struck us like a thunderbolt; our adversaries seized the moment and drove off his lieutenants into obscurity. The tide pushed me with them and I had sense enough to follow.

 

I profess no wish to reclaim the mantle of our movement, nor any hope that it might revive in the hearts of my readers. Our cause ended with Thomas; he gave it life. I cannot vindicate him before his detractors: his life is his alibi, known to his friends if even the world should skew or forget it. Honor is not man’s final measure. I wish others to love him because I loved him, but his virtue is solid marble of the soul—no earthly thing could budge it for better or worse, least of all the success or failure of my letters.

 

I write now only to fulfill the solemn duty of a friend and to offer the truth for any who still care to hear it. If even a few come to learn what passed between us in the years I knew him, I shall consider that duty discharged.

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I really like the nominalistic almost-academic style of the writing, and could see this particular character as a strong intellectual who uses the pen as a sword. I'd read this, as I find myself wanting to know more about the backstory, and what brought things to this point, and indeed, what comes after.

Member of Jnet Addict Club 12/05

Order of the Nocturnal

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for the delay on this.

 

As with Brendo, I like the professional academic writing style. It is reminiscent of the political pamphlets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is an in character writing since the character assumes the readers know what he is talking about already. Such writing styles are not easy to keep on due to the need for balance between staying in character and informing the true audience of things they wouldn't possibly know. I wish it were longer, but as a forward (not a prologue, though, it is written as a forward), it works.

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