After the prologue, there are links to a PDF version of Chapters 1-4 as well as a link to a Word document that readers can complete and return to me if they wish to send me feedback. Or feel free to comment directly on the blog. Thanks for reading!
PROLOGUE
Where to begin?
Many writers like to start their
stories with a bang, jumping right into the middle of some hot mess, trying to
hook the reader with a shocking dose of tense, dizzying commotion. Others take
the slow, methodical approach, carefully setting the scene, and then zooming in
slowly like a camera until the main character is front and center.
But, really, a story can start any
old way. I suspect that deciding just where
to begin a story is a problem that drives writers crazy. Or maybe it’s just me.
I wish I knew for sure. I don’t know too many writers.
Take this story, for example. This one
begins on a sunny morning in the city of El Cajon ,
a suburb of San Diego , which is a large metropolis
in the state of California ,
in the country of The United States, in the Year of Our Lord 2009. It begins
with a fourteen-year-old (almost fifteen) boy by the name of Les Mendoza, as he
plays basketball with a couple of friends on Monday, June 10th, the
first real day of summer break (because everyone knows that weekends don’t
count…).
But is that the best place for the story to start?
I suppose some writers, if this
were their story to tell, might have chosen to begin almost a full year before,
at the end of the previous summer, when Les returned home from spending two
months at his tia’s house in Mexico to
discover that his father had met a woman. Julia. This was a great shock to Les,
as was the horrifyingly rapid escalation of their relationship. The thing was,
the more he got to know Julia, the more he hated her, and every time he had
dealings with her, the more certain he became that she hated him with equal, if
not greater, fervor. Now, if this was your standard story about some adolescent
boy who meets his future stepmom, and who, through a series of painful lessons
about life, is finally able to overcome his initial hatred for her and learn to
accept her and perhaps even to love her, it might make sense to start here, but
it isn’t.
Other, and perhaps better, writers might
have started the story a few years before that, in the fall of 2005, when Les’s
mother was killed in a car accident, because that’s when things really started
going wrong for Les. Of course, it didn’t help that when the accident occurred,
his mother happened to be coming to pick him up from basketball practice. Or
that Les, who usually walked himself home, had felt particularly lazy that day
and so called home and pestered his mom until she agreed to come get him. Now,
that’s a tough thing for any boy to deal with, let alone one who is already prone
to blaming himself when bad things happen. Les was sad and quiet for a long
time after that, and nearly lost all of the real friends he had, except Omar,
his best and closest friend since sixth grade. But he had his dad, and together
they endured the nightmares and the misery of being alone. That whole time was
tragic and depressing, and it was hard enough to witness, let alone write
about, and I just couldn’t bring myself to start the story there.
On the other hand, one could plausibly
argue that a compete telling of this story can begin at one, and only one,
place: his birth. But, if I might be
perfectly frank, there really was nothing truly remarkable about the birth of
Les Mendoza. Don’t get me wrong; every birth is a miracle, and every child marks
the creation of a new, mysterious universe. My point is simply that he wasn’t
anymore a miracle, or anymore a new mysterious universe, than any other kid
born on that day, or any other. The facts are simple: born July 21st, 1995, to Hector
and Annette Mendoza at the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton
Les, it might be noted, was born
with a full head of bushy black hair and a pair of thickly-lashed dark brown
eyes, but in all other respects was unremarkable in appearance. At least the
other babies in the incubation room and their parents took no special notice of
him.
As he grew up, Les was always small
for his size, and tended to be a friendly, well-intentioned child. He was never
the center of attention, but most everyone seemed to like him well enough,
although sometimes you would have to prompt his classmates and teachers before
they remembered whom you were talking about. He didn’t collect friends the way
some people collect, oh, let’s say stickers, but he always had a small group of
close friends who ‘got’ him and to whom he was devoted. In most ways he was
like most kids, and his early childhood was marked by nothing more sinister
than basketball, bicycles, and birthday parties. Sometimes his ball went flat, sometimes
his tire got a nail in it, and sometimes he didn’t get what he wanted, and
these constituted almost all the terrible tragedies in his early life.
Obviously, there’s little point in starting here, as nothing is quite so boring
as a story about a kid with a happy childhood.
Going even further back, some
people, especially writers of a certain genre, might suggest that it would be
best to begin Les’ story with the story of his parents, perhaps on the night
they met, because that’s always a very romantic scene, even if it’s only
romantic in retrospect. Besides, these writers hasten to assure us, readers
love romance. But others, equally ardent, would quickly counter that romance
has no place in this story, and that it would be far better to begin with a
closer look at his father, and the Mendoza family, which has a rich history
that traces back from California to Mexico to Spain, and, before that, far into
the dim and unrecorded annals of time. Some knowledge of the Mendoza family history, these people would contend,
is essential to understanding the events that befall Les in his own time. To
this I say that too much information is as often a curse as it is a blessing,
and besides, I really don’t want this story to begin like the Old Testament
books of Numbers and Deuteronomy.
And if we were to go back that far,
then a single large step further might make a better starting point, because no
account of Les’ travails can truly be considered given without mentioning that keystone
moment in history, some three thousand years ago, when the so-called Trojan War
(but known by others as the First Olympian War) and subsequent events
fundamentally changed the direction and course of the mortal world forever.
And yet, to truly understand that momentous time requires knowledge of what came before, and that would lead us in a very winding path all the
way to the very beginning of beginnings, the birth of the universe, and the
earth, and the gods themselves. Those events have been covered, however, and
are readily available for anyone to read, even now. If they are not always
accurate, and if the accounts sometimes seem to disagree (if not blatantly
contradict each other), at least they are, in a general sense, close enough to
the truth to suffice. If you are interested in that portion of the story, you
can glean the essentials from any respectable book on Greek mythology. Many
such books exist, and while I will not get caught up in side-choosing, I will
simply say that each one reflects the truth in some ways, and fails in others,
and the difference between them is small enough to be overlooked, except by the
most serious and committed of truth-seekers.
At any rate, I believe I’ve made my
point; actually, probably more than made it: Starting a story is not always as
easy as it seems. If this digression has already bored you, I apologize. Perhaps
I should have clarified earlier: I am not a natural writer. So please take that
into account as you decide if you want to read further or not. If you do,
consider yourself warned.
All of which brings us back to that
late morning in early summer in 2009, which started, to all appearances, with a
few friends playing basketball at a neighborhood park. Perhaps it is not the
best choice for a beginning, but it’s probably not the worst either. And, no
matter what any critics of this selection might argue, there is one thing that
cannot be denied: it was the day that
everything changed for Les Mendoza.
Link to Chapters 1-4 of The Adventures of Heracles Mendoza: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r5d7hc40ldmx3nu/AACm7mtjRyfGUN-4_wxkQLNja/Ad%20of%20HM%20-%20BK1%20Dr2%20Ch%201-4.pdf
Link to Feedback form: https://www.dropbox.com/home/AoHM%20Bk1%20Second%20Draft
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