FIC: 1/3 "Moon Madness" OB/DM (NC-17)
Oct. 10th, 2003 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Moon Madness
OK, the title is terrible. I would never choose such a title now. It makes me cringe, this title, but I said I wouldn't revise this fic so I won't. Not even the title. Reasons I don't like the title: The alliteration is too obvious. 'Moon' goes with 'madness' in too clichéd a way. It draws attention to one particular scene only in the story, and it's a scene that I find a bit cringe-worthy now. The title doesn't seem to encapsulate the point of the fic. And it sounds corny.
by Lobelia
Finished on 7 February 2002. Notes written on 21 October 2003.
Category: Romance, POV
I had no idea how to do Headers. I copied the 'category' rubric from 'Least Expected'.
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Dominic, Orlando; Orlando, Billy
I didn't even know how to do the pairings slashes! Bless.
Summary: Dominic and Orlando discover passion on a New Zealand beach. There's also a brief fling involving Billy.
Author's Notes: My very first slash-fic! Three 'chapters', alternating POVs. Feedback very, very welcome, incl. critical.
And so it was. Although I recently rediscovered an even earlier handscrawled attempt at Sam/Frodo fps! This is also the first story that I had written in English in almost 2 decades.
In order not to interrupt the flow of reading too much, I've bundled my notes at the end of each 'chapter'. There are some minor punctuation errors that I have neither corrected nor commented on.
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1. Orlando
Orlando stood at the bar, feeling randy as hell.
He enjoyed feeling randy because one of the best things about this new shoot and about being in New Zealand was how easy and plentiful the sex was. He wasn't a famous movie star, not yet anyway, but he was an actor in a famous movie. All he needed to do was to let on that he was part of the cast, bat his eyelids a few times, and lean back to enjoy the ride. Sometimes he didn't let on anything and went for the challenge of seducing someone without outside help. He was good at that, too. Fuck it, he was great at that.
He glanced at the mirror behind the bar and saw a young, hot guy with sharp clothes and a cool, punky haircut, spiky on top and shaved at the sides, and that guy was himself. Orlando lifted his beer can to his mouth, let some beer dribble down his chin, licked the foam off his lips, wiped his chin and looked about him for someone to take to his hotel bed.
It wasn't the best of nights tonight. Somehow, he'd got separated from the really fun crowd of the cast and crew, Dominic and Elijah and Liv and David and Steve the Orc and that guy from lighting, and ended up with a group who'd all gone home for an early night. Still, no matter, the night was young. Well, sort of young, the pub passably crowded, the live music tolerable, and who should walk in the door but dear old Billy.
Orlando lifted his can to him in greeting. Billy grinned, and Orlando signalled to him that he'd be getting him a drink. He put his empty can down and ordered two more beers, and as he looked over towards Billy again he felt that familiar, dry acidic taste at the back of his throat and desire flame up in his jeans.
It wasn't ideal to be having sex with someone in the immediate casting circle but then again, why not? And why not Billy? Why not, indeed?
Seen across the room like this, Billy did look full of promise. His eyes were luscious, his lips cherubic, and a stray forelock had tumbled across his forehead so that Billy, every now and again, puffed out his lips to blow it away, and that was sexy, too.
The beers arrived, and Orlando grabbed them and made his way through the remaining crowd. He was already planning what to do when he reached Billy. As soon as he'd crossed the room he threw one arm around Billy's shoulders, gave him a quick kiss squarely on the mouth and said, close to Billy's ear and making his voice low and husky, "How's it going, Billy?"
Billy blinked and said something.
"What?" shouted Orlando. The band had struck up, people were cheering, and the music drowned out any hope of conversation. 'All the better,' thought Orlando. 'Things will move faster if there's no conversation.'
"I said," said Billy, close to Orlando's ear. "Thanks for the beer."
Orlando grinned. He tugged the ring pull off and took a long draught, looking at Billy all the while. Then he licked his lips but left a bit of foam, just for fun, and moved close to Billy's ear.
"You're looking a bit lovelorn tonight," he said, and immediately moved back to check the effect.
Billy looked surprised. "Well," he shouted back into Orlando's ear. "I am a bit, actually, yes."
That should have sent the alarm bells ringing. But Orlando, obtuse, just smiled and used it for a pick-up line, "Maybe I can make you forget that for a bit?"
Not very original but it seemed to work. Billy's answer came faster than he'd expected. "Maybe you can!" he said, and then, "You sure are a fast mover, you old bastard."
Orlando laughed. "That's me," he said. "Always eager to be of service."
Billy laughed, too, and after some more banter backwards and forwards and two more beers each, they made their way across town back to their hotel. Billy was good fun, giving innuendo as good as he got, but looking a little nervous, too, which added spice to the whole thing. Just before they reached Orlando's door, Billy stopped him in the hotel corridor and whispered, "You know, I've not done this with a bloke before."
Orlando loved that line! It made him throb with desire, and he placed his hands on Billy's waist which was slim and warm, and whispered, making his voice a bit campy and blowing hot breath into Billy's ear, "Well, then it's about time you did, Billy m'dear." He moved in for a kiss. Billy's lips were surprisingly soft, energetic and pliant at the same time, and there was a delicious little groove between his upper lip and his nose against which Orlando rolled his tongue.
But Orlando didn't want to spend too long on the preliminaries. He pulled Billy along and they stumbled down the corridor. Orlando fumbled for his keys, feeling just ever so slightly out of it, and opened the door. He went in, without turning on the light, and stood against the wall, his head tilted back, breathing heavily and waiting for Billy to make a move. He wanted Billy to make the first move, because it was important that Billy shouldn't feel foolish and first-timerish, and also because it was sexy as hell, waiting in the dark for another guy's mouth.
The latch went 'click', he felt Billy leaning against the back of the closed door in the dark, only inches away from him, and then there was Billy's hot breath, not on his cheek as he'd expected but against his groin. He gave a gasp and grabbed Billy's hair, as Billy pushed his face against his jeans and mouthed Orlando's cock through the denim fabric.
Everything went quickly after that. Orlando tugged off his clothes, Billy encircled the tip of his cock with his tongue, and they lurched towards the bed. Orlando gasped. Billy went "aah" and left bite marks all along Orlando's upper arm.
The sex was wild. The sex was hot.
It was afterwards that things began to go sour.
Just as Orlando was drifting into a dreamless, post-coital sleep, he felt Billy shift next to him and make an odd, strangled sound. Orlando opened his eyes. By the orange neon light of the hotel sign coming in through the window, he could just make out the contours of Billy, sitting up amid the bedclothes, a hand covering his eyes.
"What's up, Billy?" he said.
"Oh, nothing, don't worry about it," came the muffled reply.
Orlando sighed inwardly. Not some emotional trauma! 'If I'd wanted an after-sex heart-to-heart,' he thought, 'I'd have gone to bed with that girl from costume.' But he was a well-brought-up young man so he sat up and touched Billy on the shoulder and said, kindly, "Come on, Billy, what's up?"
"Nothing, nothing," repeated Billy and jumped off the bed. Orlando heard him take a deep breath, he then turned around, his face half in shadow and his eyes huge and glistening in the orange semi-darkness. "At least, nothing to do with you. Please don't worry. But I'd better go now."
'Yes,' Orlando thought and fell back onto the bed. 'Yes, you'd better.' What he said out loud was, "I had a great time." He said that because it was true and, also, because that's what he always said. He liked to part on good terms, and he liked affairs to be conducted properly and politely. Particularly one-night stands.
"So did I," said Billy, fervently. He was pulling on his clothes and leaned over Orlando for a good-bye kiss. "But let's forget about it in the morning, shall we? Is that OK by you?"
"Perfectly OK," murmured Orlando and smiled. The door clicked shut and Orlando rolled over. 'What do you know,' he thought. 'Poor old Billy does have love problems. Thank heaven I'm not into those.'
Orlando didn't like to be anyone's nanny or hand-holder, though. 'I'd better steer clear of these emotional types,' was his last thought before drifting into sleep. 'Stick with the ones who I know just wanna have fun.'
This was the frame of mind he was in two days later, at the fateful beach party. Or what turned out to be the fateful beach party. He didn't then suspect, of course, that it was going to be fateful at all. The idea was: it was going to be fun, not fate.
It was a barbecue at night on the beach, with all the usual suspects joining in. Even Sean and Viggo had come along, and there were David and Dominic and Miranda and Steve the Orc, and true, Billy was there, too, but he left early and seemed troubled. Orlando thought no more about him. There was steak, and there were buns, and even salad, there was wine and beer and dope galore. The fire crackled and was orange. The ocean roared and was black. Elijah had brought a portable radio, and they danced in the sand and fell over each other's legs. Above them, the Southern Cross blazed, and the air smelled of salt and sex.
Everyone looked erotic in the fire and star light but Orlando quickly decided on his partner for the night. Sean and Viggo he didn't know about, and Steve the Orc was canoodling up to Miranda, and David looked too spaced-out, and Elijah looked as if he might want more than just a one-night quickie, and Liv, well, Liv was Liv. Really, there was only one person there who'd be good for a bit of sport, no questions asked, no secrets told, and most definitely, no strings attached.
Notes on 'chapter' 1:
Orlando stood at the bar, feeling randy as hell..
I still don't mind this beginning. It's right in there, and it links Orlando to sex, and that's not a bad thing. :-)
"You know, I've not done this with a bloke before.." Endlessly clichéd line but I didn't even know that at the time! And it's sort of redeemed by the following line which seems to be poking fun at my own cliché: Orlando loved that line!.
Billy's lips were surprisingly soft, energetic and pliant .
I am too aware of the cliché of 'pliant' these days. Fanfic lips are always 'pliant', and in a way I regret having lost the ability just to write words like 'pliant' and not be bothered by fanfic clichés. For the same reason, I can't write 'tangling', either (of tongues or of hands in hair). I wish I could redeem these words for myself somehow.
The sex was wild. The sex was hot..
I had thought that I first used this kind of repetion in 'Up Shit Creek' so I was surprised, upon re-reading, to find it here! That was one thing that was interesting to me later: to see what bits of my later style are already prefigured in this first fic.
The characterisation of Billy is a bit too shallow. Also, I would now never introduce a plot strand that does not get resolved later. If Billy is crying in chapter 1, this needs to be taken up again at some later point. And in this fic it doesn't: this is a flaw. I'm reminded of Alfred Hitchcock's words of advice to a young filmmaker: "If you're going to show a shotgun hanging on a wall in your first scene, that shotgun will have had to go off by the end of the movie." That's how narrative works: everything is important, everything sets up expectations, and here those narrative expectations vis-à-vis Billy were not met by the end of the fic. In fact, Billy gets 'dropped' after having been wheeled on as a tool to characterise Orlando.
'Stick with the ones who I know just wanna have fun.'
This was the frame of mind he was in two days later, at the fateful beach party. .
This is a clumsy transition. I hadn't yet learned how to move from one scene to the next.
I assembled a 'cast o'thousands' at the beach party. This is because I was very excited still about knowing who all of these people were and about imagining them all as one happy family. I am still not good at writing scenes that involve a large number of people. Here, it's just a list, and if I were to rewrite this now, I'd make the group of people smaller. I sometimes read fics in which a large assembly of the cast features as backdrop for a pairing, and I'm always in two minds about such scenes. Because the background figures end up just names that get wheeled on and off again. On the other hand, I am pleased to note that even at this early stage I was showing a healthy interest in the obscure actors! Steve the Orc was a complete and utter unknown at this time! Even David and Miranda were very rare in February 2002, just after FotR.
And I've always loved beaches. This is the first of a long series of beach scenes: Dom and Orli have their first kiss on a very similar beach in 'When the Cat's Away', and the beach is prominent in 'Crabs in the Sand' (part 1 of the Arthropods series). I love setting, and I love dreaming myself into favourite settings, and I have been to that NZ beach: so all of this was there already in this very first fic.
The fire crackled and was orange. The ocean roared and was black. .
I still use this type of sentence: stating the obvious in a fake naîve way, and I still quite like this ploy.
On the whole, this first chapter does succeed in characterising Orlando more or less (although the characterisation is a *bit* patchy -- the sex-stalking doesn't quite chime in with the politeness etiquette; I had a bit of an axe to grind there, I think -- but it's OK -- very non-fanonish but that's all right) and in setting up what's to follow. An expectation is created at the end with the 'fateful' bit (a little portentous but I can live with that). However, there's no inkling as to the future pairing, and I think I would do a section of 'show not tell' if I were to rewrite this now. I would list the people on the beach but I would describe Dominic: his hair, his mouth, his eyes -- it doesn't really matter what because any physical description at all would set up an expectation that Dominic was going to be more important than the others. And it's also a subtle way to signal Orlando's interest without stating it overtly -- perhaps because the description occurs at a point where Orlando is not even quite aware of his interest himself. But that's a strategy I had not yet learned. As it is, the readers (and Orlando) hit on Dominic only by a process of elimination, and that's a sort of negative nothing-better-around choice that does not make sense in light of what is to follow. Or, if that had been my point (Orlando making a bored kind of choice), I would now emphasise that somehow. The point is: I hadn't really thought it through, and it shows.
I think one problem is that we haven't been made to sympathise with Orlando enough to care about what's going to happen to him next. He's set up as a bit callous but I would now also include some allusion to brittleness and the *need* to be callous, how that protects him from feeling hurtful emotions.
OK, the title is terrible. I would never choose such a title now. It makes me cringe, this title, but I said I wouldn't revise this fic so I won't. Not even the title. Reasons I don't like the title: The alliteration is too obvious. 'Moon' goes with 'madness' in too clichéd a way. It draws attention to one particular scene only in the story, and it's a scene that I find a bit cringe-worthy now. The title doesn't seem to encapsulate the point of the fic. And it sounds corny.
by Lobelia
Finished on 7 February 2002. Notes written on 21 October 2003.
Category: Romance, POV
I had no idea how to do Headers. I copied the 'category' rubric from 'Least Expected'.
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Dominic, Orlando; Orlando, Billy
I didn't even know how to do the pairings slashes! Bless.
Summary: Dominic and Orlando discover passion on a New Zealand beach. There's also a brief fling involving Billy.
Author's Notes: My very first slash-fic! Three 'chapters', alternating POVs. Feedback very, very welcome, incl. critical.
And so it was. Although I recently rediscovered an even earlier handscrawled attempt at Sam/Frodo fps! This is also the first story that I had written in English in almost 2 decades.
In order not to interrupt the flow of reading too much, I've bundled my notes at the end of each 'chapter'. There are some minor punctuation errors that I have neither corrected nor commented on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Orlando
Orlando stood at the bar, feeling randy as hell.
He enjoyed feeling randy because one of the best things about this new shoot and about being in New Zealand was how easy and plentiful the sex was. He wasn't a famous movie star, not yet anyway, but he was an actor in a famous movie. All he needed to do was to let on that he was part of the cast, bat his eyelids a few times, and lean back to enjoy the ride. Sometimes he didn't let on anything and went for the challenge of seducing someone without outside help. He was good at that, too. Fuck it, he was great at that.
He glanced at the mirror behind the bar and saw a young, hot guy with sharp clothes and a cool, punky haircut, spiky on top and shaved at the sides, and that guy was himself. Orlando lifted his beer can to his mouth, let some beer dribble down his chin, licked the foam off his lips, wiped his chin and looked about him for someone to take to his hotel bed.
It wasn't the best of nights tonight. Somehow, he'd got separated from the really fun crowd of the cast and crew, Dominic and Elijah and Liv and David and Steve the Orc and that guy from lighting, and ended up with a group who'd all gone home for an early night. Still, no matter, the night was young. Well, sort of young, the pub passably crowded, the live music tolerable, and who should walk in the door but dear old Billy.
Orlando lifted his can to him in greeting. Billy grinned, and Orlando signalled to him that he'd be getting him a drink. He put his empty can down and ordered two more beers, and as he looked over towards Billy again he felt that familiar, dry acidic taste at the back of his throat and desire flame up in his jeans.
It wasn't ideal to be having sex with someone in the immediate casting circle but then again, why not? And why not Billy? Why not, indeed?
Seen across the room like this, Billy did look full of promise. His eyes were luscious, his lips cherubic, and a stray forelock had tumbled across his forehead so that Billy, every now and again, puffed out his lips to blow it away, and that was sexy, too.
The beers arrived, and Orlando grabbed them and made his way through the remaining crowd. He was already planning what to do when he reached Billy. As soon as he'd crossed the room he threw one arm around Billy's shoulders, gave him a quick kiss squarely on the mouth and said, close to Billy's ear and making his voice low and husky, "How's it going, Billy?"
Billy blinked and said something.
"What?" shouted Orlando. The band had struck up, people were cheering, and the music drowned out any hope of conversation. 'All the better,' thought Orlando. 'Things will move faster if there's no conversation.'
"I said," said Billy, close to Orlando's ear. "Thanks for the beer."
Orlando grinned. He tugged the ring pull off and took a long draught, looking at Billy all the while. Then he licked his lips but left a bit of foam, just for fun, and moved close to Billy's ear.
"You're looking a bit lovelorn tonight," he said, and immediately moved back to check the effect.
Billy looked surprised. "Well," he shouted back into Orlando's ear. "I am a bit, actually, yes."
That should have sent the alarm bells ringing. But Orlando, obtuse, just smiled and used it for a pick-up line, "Maybe I can make you forget that for a bit?"
Not very original but it seemed to work. Billy's answer came faster than he'd expected. "Maybe you can!" he said, and then, "You sure are a fast mover, you old bastard."
Orlando laughed. "That's me," he said. "Always eager to be of service."
Billy laughed, too, and after some more banter backwards and forwards and two more beers each, they made their way across town back to their hotel. Billy was good fun, giving innuendo as good as he got, but looking a little nervous, too, which added spice to the whole thing. Just before they reached Orlando's door, Billy stopped him in the hotel corridor and whispered, "You know, I've not done this with a bloke before."
Orlando loved that line! It made him throb with desire, and he placed his hands on Billy's waist which was slim and warm, and whispered, making his voice a bit campy and blowing hot breath into Billy's ear, "Well, then it's about time you did, Billy m'dear." He moved in for a kiss. Billy's lips were surprisingly soft, energetic and pliant at the same time, and there was a delicious little groove between his upper lip and his nose against which Orlando rolled his tongue.
But Orlando didn't want to spend too long on the preliminaries. He pulled Billy along and they stumbled down the corridor. Orlando fumbled for his keys, feeling just ever so slightly out of it, and opened the door. He went in, without turning on the light, and stood against the wall, his head tilted back, breathing heavily and waiting for Billy to make a move. He wanted Billy to make the first move, because it was important that Billy shouldn't feel foolish and first-timerish, and also because it was sexy as hell, waiting in the dark for another guy's mouth.
The latch went 'click', he felt Billy leaning against the back of the closed door in the dark, only inches away from him, and then there was Billy's hot breath, not on his cheek as he'd expected but against his groin. He gave a gasp and grabbed Billy's hair, as Billy pushed his face against his jeans and mouthed Orlando's cock through the denim fabric.
Everything went quickly after that. Orlando tugged off his clothes, Billy encircled the tip of his cock with his tongue, and they lurched towards the bed. Orlando gasped. Billy went "aah" and left bite marks all along Orlando's upper arm.
The sex was wild. The sex was hot.
It was afterwards that things began to go sour.
Just as Orlando was drifting into a dreamless, post-coital sleep, he felt Billy shift next to him and make an odd, strangled sound. Orlando opened his eyes. By the orange neon light of the hotel sign coming in through the window, he could just make out the contours of Billy, sitting up amid the bedclothes, a hand covering his eyes.
"What's up, Billy?" he said.
"Oh, nothing, don't worry about it," came the muffled reply.
Orlando sighed inwardly. Not some emotional trauma! 'If I'd wanted an after-sex heart-to-heart,' he thought, 'I'd have gone to bed with that girl from costume.' But he was a well-brought-up young man so he sat up and touched Billy on the shoulder and said, kindly, "Come on, Billy, what's up?"
"Nothing, nothing," repeated Billy and jumped off the bed. Orlando heard him take a deep breath, he then turned around, his face half in shadow and his eyes huge and glistening in the orange semi-darkness. "At least, nothing to do with you. Please don't worry. But I'd better go now."
'Yes,' Orlando thought and fell back onto the bed. 'Yes, you'd better.' What he said out loud was, "I had a great time." He said that because it was true and, also, because that's what he always said. He liked to part on good terms, and he liked affairs to be conducted properly and politely. Particularly one-night stands.
"So did I," said Billy, fervently. He was pulling on his clothes and leaned over Orlando for a good-bye kiss. "But let's forget about it in the morning, shall we? Is that OK by you?"
"Perfectly OK," murmured Orlando and smiled. The door clicked shut and Orlando rolled over. 'What do you know,' he thought. 'Poor old Billy does have love problems. Thank heaven I'm not into those.'
Orlando didn't like to be anyone's nanny or hand-holder, though. 'I'd better steer clear of these emotional types,' was his last thought before drifting into sleep. 'Stick with the ones who I know just wanna have fun.'
This was the frame of mind he was in two days later, at the fateful beach party. Or what turned out to be the fateful beach party. He didn't then suspect, of course, that it was going to be fateful at all. The idea was: it was going to be fun, not fate.
It was a barbecue at night on the beach, with all the usual suspects joining in. Even Sean and Viggo had come along, and there were David and Dominic and Miranda and Steve the Orc, and true, Billy was there, too, but he left early and seemed troubled. Orlando thought no more about him. There was steak, and there were buns, and even salad, there was wine and beer and dope galore. The fire crackled and was orange. The ocean roared and was black. Elijah had brought a portable radio, and they danced in the sand and fell over each other's legs. Above them, the Southern Cross blazed, and the air smelled of salt and sex.
Everyone looked erotic in the fire and star light but Orlando quickly decided on his partner for the night. Sean and Viggo he didn't know about, and Steve the Orc was canoodling up to Miranda, and David looked too spaced-out, and Elijah looked as if he might want more than just a one-night quickie, and Liv, well, Liv was Liv. Really, there was only one person there who'd be good for a bit of sport, no questions asked, no secrets told, and most definitely, no strings attached.
Notes on 'chapter' 1:
Orlando stood at the bar, feeling randy as hell..
I still don't mind this beginning. It's right in there, and it links Orlando to sex, and that's not a bad thing. :-)
"You know, I've not done this with a bloke before.." Endlessly clichéd line but I didn't even know that at the time! And it's sort of redeemed by the following line which seems to be poking fun at my own cliché: Orlando loved that line!.
Billy's lips were surprisingly soft, energetic and pliant .
I am too aware of the cliché of 'pliant' these days. Fanfic lips are always 'pliant', and in a way I regret having lost the ability just to write words like 'pliant' and not be bothered by fanfic clichés. For the same reason, I can't write 'tangling', either (of tongues or of hands in hair). I wish I could redeem these words for myself somehow.
The sex was wild. The sex was hot..
I had thought that I first used this kind of repetion in 'Up Shit Creek' so I was surprised, upon re-reading, to find it here! That was one thing that was interesting to me later: to see what bits of my later style are already prefigured in this first fic.
The characterisation of Billy is a bit too shallow. Also, I would now never introduce a plot strand that does not get resolved later. If Billy is crying in chapter 1, this needs to be taken up again at some later point. And in this fic it doesn't: this is a flaw. I'm reminded of Alfred Hitchcock's words of advice to a young filmmaker: "If you're going to show a shotgun hanging on a wall in your first scene, that shotgun will have had to go off by the end of the movie." That's how narrative works: everything is important, everything sets up expectations, and here those narrative expectations vis-à-vis Billy were not met by the end of the fic. In fact, Billy gets 'dropped' after having been wheeled on as a tool to characterise Orlando.
'Stick with the ones who I know just wanna have fun.'
This was the frame of mind he was in two days later, at the fateful beach party. .
This is a clumsy transition. I hadn't yet learned how to move from one scene to the next.
I assembled a 'cast o'thousands' at the beach party. This is because I was very excited still about knowing who all of these people were and about imagining them all as one happy family. I am still not good at writing scenes that involve a large number of people. Here, it's just a list, and if I were to rewrite this now, I'd make the group of people smaller. I sometimes read fics in which a large assembly of the cast features as backdrop for a pairing, and I'm always in two minds about such scenes. Because the background figures end up just names that get wheeled on and off again. On the other hand, I am pleased to note that even at this early stage I was showing a healthy interest in the obscure actors! Steve the Orc was a complete and utter unknown at this time! Even David and Miranda were very rare in February 2002, just after FotR.
And I've always loved beaches. This is the first of a long series of beach scenes: Dom and Orli have their first kiss on a very similar beach in 'When the Cat's Away', and the beach is prominent in 'Crabs in the Sand' (part 1 of the Arthropods series). I love setting, and I love dreaming myself into favourite settings, and I have been to that NZ beach: so all of this was there already in this very first fic.
The fire crackled and was orange. The ocean roared and was black. .
I still use this type of sentence: stating the obvious in a fake naîve way, and I still quite like this ploy.
On the whole, this first chapter does succeed in characterising Orlando more or less (although the characterisation is a *bit* patchy -- the sex-stalking doesn't quite chime in with the politeness etiquette; I had a bit of an axe to grind there, I think -- but it's OK -- very non-fanonish but that's all right) and in setting up what's to follow. An expectation is created at the end with the 'fateful' bit (a little portentous but I can live with that). However, there's no inkling as to the future pairing, and I think I would do a section of 'show not tell' if I were to rewrite this now. I would list the people on the beach but I would describe Dominic: his hair, his mouth, his eyes -- it doesn't really matter what because any physical description at all would set up an expectation that Dominic was going to be more important than the others. And it's also a subtle way to signal Orlando's interest without stating it overtly -- perhaps because the description occurs at a point where Orlando is not even quite aware of his interest himself. But that's a strategy I had not yet learned. As it is, the readers (and Orlando) hit on Dominic only by a process of elimination, and that's a sort of negative nothing-better-around choice that does not make sense in light of what is to follow. Or, if that had been my point (Orlando making a bored kind of choice), I would now emphasise that somehow. The point is: I hadn't really thought it through, and it shows.
I think one problem is that we haven't been made to sympathise with Orlando enough to care about what's going to happen to him next. He's set up as a bit callous but I would now also include some allusion to brittleness and the *need* to be callous, how that protects him from feeling hurtful emotions.