"I see the boy that I shot a week later..."

 Although Each Separate Dying Ember starts with this phrase, whenever I imagine the beginning, it's always here:

This is, in case it is not clear, a hot-off-the-press illustration of... Well. That. It's described in moderate detail in the first few chapters. And the whole scene is a prominent image within the book.

As first sentences go, I'd say it's a pretty good one. Lots of ambiguity, sets the tone of the novel, gets people interested, all of that lark. And when I set out with the first draft of Dying Ember, even I didn't have all the answers to the questions it puts forward. The whole world and concept of Dying Ember came together pretty much as it was written. It meant a lot of editing afterwards, but it also made for a lot of fun at the time - and that was always the thing with this novel. It was always fun.

I tried a lot of first lines. I tried a lot of first paragraphs and first chapters. All I had to start off with was winged people in a modern city, and a lot of confused loose ideas about where to go with it from there. Gangs? Yes. Virtual reality? Probably. Gladiatorial competition? Sure.

Then this.

"I see the boy that I shot a week later."

I tried "I saw the boy that I shot a week later" and "She saw the boy that she shot a week later" (believe it or not I really don't actually like writing in first-person) and "A week later, I see him: the boy I shot" but somehow none of them fit.

And aside from logistics, what it means is important to me. Agency in this novel - the ability to make choices, to decide where they go and what they do - is an issue. You could even argue the characters' lack of agency is a theme.

But the Prelims, as we discover later, are about the intention to kill. You have to want to live, to want to escape, to be willing to take another life to make it out. Dany had to decide to pull the trigger. She may not have wanted to be in the Prelim, she may have been destined and pushed to go there, her whole life may have been staged by her place in society - but she decided, she chose, to pull the trigger.

And in a novel about free will and about agency being taken away, what better way to start than with a choice?

(also, just like. imagine that scene opening a TV adaptation or something. that's the main reason i wanted to draw it. darkness, terrified breathing, a tangle of shots of hand and face and knife and gun - and then BAM. dany, holding the gun. kiah, caught between glee and shock. the world tumbles away into pixels and embers...

cut to busy street, one week later.)