Prologue

The Text:

On the night of September 19th, 2019, Noah was hauled up at his father's house, the doors and windows bolted shut. Noah hadn't been to his part time job in weeks as his wealthy boss had shut the book store he worked in and fled to a more stable country. Looting and rioting were taking place across the UK and citizens were urged by those in power to stay at home and lock the doors. Noah's father obliged, and spat vicious words whenever he would talk of the rioters. Noah thought of them as protestors.

Noah's father had taken the government’s directive further and sealed himself inside his study, saying that he was marking end of year exams. Noah knew that he actually just wanted to be on his own, but sometimes he would knock on the door to the study anyway and ask if his father would like tea or some food; his father would reply with diplomatic "no" and that would be it for the communication between them for the evening.

Noah was sat in his own room on his computer reading the online message boards on the riots. Despite how devastating they were turning out to be, there was a sense of excitement in him that something real was finally happening and that change might be coming. "The government can't ignore us now!", "We are coming for you PM Jacobs" were the sort of messages Noah was reading. He wanted to add his own voice to the chorus of dissent, but every time he would type something out, he would quickly delete it. Someone had definitely written something better than I could, he thought.

At about ten in the evening, a link to a live-stream of Trafalgar Square was at the top of every major forum discussing the riots. Noah clicked on the link and a live-stream opened up in a new tab. It was footage being taken by a drone surveying the scene around the square. There was no mention of who owned, or was operating it, but that didn’t seem to matter to the thousands of viewers. He could see that the rioters of London had gathered in the square, made a camp, and barricaded themselves in. The police had been joined by the army and had created an impenetrable wall along Whitehall and around the Houses of Parliament, which was the suspected target of the rioters. Noah perched on the edge of his desk chair as the camera showed the frontline where the rioters and the police met, lit up by the foggy, dispersed light of red flares and helicopter search lights. Abuse along with bricks and bottles were being hurled from the rioter’s side. The mass of police and military was one organism that flinched and pulsated with every incoming volley. At the moment the tension between the two sides seemed to be rising to the point of breaking, the video feed shifted to a woman standing on the head of one of the four lions surrounding Nelson's column.

Noah recognised her instantly as Bo Luo, the de-facto head of the anti-capitalist group Occupy, which was rumoured to be at the heart of the riots. Bo was the daughter of two Chinese entrepreneurs that had left China in the 1980s and had come to Britain. He had read that Bo had actually been born in London and famously didn't speak a word of Chinese. From the footage streaming into his computer, Noah saw that she had dyed her jet black hair a crimson red. She was wearing a military green jacket and black jeans which bunched up at her thick black doc martins. She looked exactly like a revolutionary leader should, Noah thought.

When she had the attention of the crowd and the cameras below her she began to speak through a megaphone. With everything she said the crowd repeated her words, echoing them and making sure they could be heard by everyone in attendance.

"This is the night that capitalism ends in this country" the crowd roared and screamed the words back to her. "We can no longer stand by and let the 1% divide and conquer us and rape and pillage their way through our precious lives. We are the 99% and we have to take back what is rightfully ours and these riots have given us the agency." The crowd erupted in hoots and cheers. "However, violence is not the answer, it can never be the answer. We cannot come down to their level. We are the people and we will protect the people. So I urge anyone who is causing destruction and mayhem, please stop now, come here and join us in this peaceful protest." The crowd repeated the words, but the energy had waned. "Capitalism is not the answer, it can never be the answer to our lives. Capitalism is the opiate of the masses and we are all too drugged up to even begin to realise this. Capitalism is not natural, it’s not inherent in humanity, whatever the believers will say. They are zealots, fundamentalists and we are the voice of reason." The crowd erupted again. "Capitalism is not the only way! Just as religion has fallen by the wayside, so will capitalism! We can let this be the night it begins to crumble, when its defences are pulled from beneath it to let it tumble into the sea!" There was a murmur of confusion rippling through the booming voice of the crowd as it sporadically repeated the words. "I urge everyone around the country, no, around the world to join our voice and tell the governments of the world that we will no longer be slaves to their capitalism, we reject their money, we reject their products, and we reject their system!"

Near the front, at the feet of the lion, a cold looking man in nothing, but a plain black t-shirt and a pair of bedraggled jeans was frantically shouting at Bo Luo, the same word, over and over: "How? How? How? How? HOW!" The people around him started to join in and a large mass of the rioters all began chanting. Bo let the megaphone fall to her side and she looked back at the other members of her movement who had climbed the lion with her. They stared back at her with fright in their eyes and mouths gaping like fish out of water.

"By being here" she cried, putting the microphone to her lips again, "by showing the government that we will not stand for it anymore." The bedraggled man began climbing up on to the lion that Bo was standing on, people were helping him up and no one above him resisted. Once he had reached the head, he viciously snatched the megaphone out of Bo's hands and screamed through it, "Burn the money!" Instantly his words began to rip through the crowd, as though the mass was caught light with the words. "Burn the money! Burn the money! Burn the money!"

The clatter of batons on riot shields and the hollering of the police and military began to resonate through the square. The camera switched back to the view from the drone and showed the riot squad beginning to move in on the crowd, pushing them back and trying to disperse them. The mass of rioters drove back, and the weight of each opposing force was two great, causing both sides to break into clashes of violent pummelling. Those at the back of the crowd began to scatter through the adjacent streets next to the square. Large gangs moving with what seemed like some deadly purpose. Bo was no longer on the lion and seemed to have disappeared into the crowd and the camera feed died.

On the night of rioting that followed, up to an estimated 500 million pounds was set alight on the streets of the UK. Most of this took place in London. As some of the protestors fought the police, the rest moved through London trying to find every shop, cash machine and bank they could, breaking in, finding the available cash and creating bonfires. Once the idea caught on, it spread like wildfire and there was nothing the police or the army could do to stop it.

In the two days that followed, the burning of money became a pandemic as people went to their banks, emptied their accounts and set fire to it. Policemen and soldiers were ordered to guard the banks, but by the second night, even they began to join in, tired as they were of the terrible pay and working conditions they were experiencing. The two days of burning became a cathartic orgy as the symbol of oppression, the Queen's head printed on a piece of fabric began to lose its meaning with every one burnt. Many people also died defending that same piece of fabric. The number of those killed rose dramatically on the third day.

By then almost twenty million pounds had been torched, and with the global economy was crumbling once again and so many countries saw restoring the UK to its previous state as a humanitarian mission. When the police and army were no longer effective in quelling the riots, the U.S. Military, along with the UN were brought in to bring them to an end. They were given the clearance by all heads of state, including Prime Minister Charles Jacobs, to use as much force as needed to restore the peace. They seemed to have no qualms with this and by the night of the third day of rioting the number of dead had risen to the thousands. The sight of blood in the streets of Britain brought an end to the orgy, entirely sapping its energy, and the rioting ceased. With food lines disrupted, power and electricity down, the transport network served, and the economy now non-existent, the British people waited in their homes like naughty children awaiting punishment.

Throughout the riots Noah and his father had not left the house. On the first night, Noah had gathered all the money in the house, which amounted to a little over twenty pounds and set fire to it in the back garden. His father had called him an idiot, but he felt as though he had done his part. When the power had gone out, Noah's father had allowed him to come into his study to read books and wait for everything to die down. They rarely talked, but it was the company they needed in those dark times rather than stimulating conversation. They ate the remainder of their rations by candle light and used an old wind up radio to listen to what was happening in the world outside their bubble.

Within two weeks of the power being restored and the food supply chains being re-established, the world seemed to be going back to normal. Prime Minister Jacob's government was immediately ousted from power and an international body, headed by the U.S. was brought in as an occupying government. The rioting and the burning of the money was immediately blamed on the terrible decisions of the previous government and a small anti-capitalist minority which they say Bo Luo had been the head of. The media chimed in with their agreement and despite the obviousness of the lie, the public seemed eager to get back to normality and so they humbly ate it up.

One of the very first measures that the interim occupying force implemented was the banning of physical currency and the introduction of the Great British Digital Currency (GBDC). The second act was the introduction of the DW/ID card, or the Digital Wallet Identity Card. This became a mandatory requirement for every citizen and was the only method now acceptable to pay for anything.

Noah and his father, like everyone else in the country, had to line up in the autumnal cold outside one of the mass DW/ID issuing tents that had sprung up all over the country in front of churches and schools. The physical money that had been burnt during the riots was restored in GBDC form. An amnesty was issued in which anyone who had emptied their bank accounts and burnt their money, could come forward and reclaim in digital form what they had destroyed, if they had proper evidence of their previous balance. Those that hadn't burnt their money like Noah's father, simply had their funds transferred into the new DW/ID account. Noah wasn't able to get back the twenty pounds he had burnt.

In the March of 2020, new general elections were held and the Labour Party and liberal coalition, headed by Prime Minister Patel came into power with a sweeping victory. The coalition promised that the mistakes of the past would not be made, but that the Green Act, the atomic bomb that ignited the riots, despite its misgivings, must continue in order to protect the future from the mistakes of the past. There were rumblings about this in left-wing newspapers and on message boards, but the country seemed too exhausted to care.

Noah couldn't understand what was happening.

"After everything the country has been through, how can everyone just go back to the way things were?" he asked his father. His father smiled at him and simply said "you have a lot to learn about the world." Noah thought that this was a terrible answer.

The Analysis:

Since I wrote this back in 2014/2015 I have done a lot of writing. I was lucky enough to do an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University and was chosen to be part of the London Writers Awards. I feel like I've learnt a lot about writing and so when I rediscovered my first novel recently, I thought I would publicly shame myself and share it to show exactly why it's terrible and what I can learn from it.

Let's start with the obvious.

Exposition is boring

This, the opening to my novel (!), is laden with backstory to the point that any narrative that tries to eke its way out is bludgeoned to death. What I would do differently now is firstly not write this novel, but secondly I would replace all the exposition with action and more importantly character development. At the moment this reads like a news report or a documentary and that is not what an exciting speculative fiction novel should be like.

Noah who?

Our protagonist is at such a distance it feels like we are observing him from across a noisy crowded room. What was supposed to be an emotional beginning about the cold relationship between a desperate man and his paranoid father, instead feels vacuous. I can see what I was trying to do but without any real scenes to show their relationship, the reader is left to puzzle piece their kinship together.

Another issue with the protagonist is that at no point in this prologue do I indicate what journey Noah is going to take through the novel or even through the chapter. The story meanders and there is no central inciting incident that sparks off Noah's arc. Things passively happen to him and then the chapter ends. I think you can write inherently passive characters but their passivity must have consequences and nothing at all seems to happen to Noah. The reader does not get to know his wants and desires, what's at stake for him and what he has the potential to lose.

It's real bad...

I can promise you, and maybe you'll see if you continue this journey with me, that this prologue does nothing to 'set up' the novel. It gives us no indication about the thrust of story, its 'red thread'; it offers no solid connection between the reader and the protagonist and therefore doesn't spark the urge to continue reading; and the heavy handed politics is going to immediately be a turn off for some, so if my intention was to be didactic, I've messed that up. It's just all bad.

What would I do differently now?

I'm not going to rewrite this novel, maybe you want to give that a go, but if I did, here are some things I would 100% do differently.

Firstly, the prologue (if needed) would have Noah making his way to his father's house to seek refuge from the riots. The reader would get to see the devastation of the riots and feel the fear in Noah as he moves through London streets set aflame with violence. I would also make it that Noah feels he has no choice but to go to his father, due to hunger, his flat being burned down, anything really. The need for safety driving him forward into the arms of his father whom he has a fractured relationship with. Doing this would allow Noah to act, to make choices, to elicit empathy from the reader which the current version is severely lacking.

Secondly, all of the exposition and political musings would disappear, but we might be shown snippets of it here and there. Maybe Noah could actually be in Trafalgar Square and see the violence begin, or at least witness some version of this in a more visceral way. Noah's passivity is important for the story, but as I wrote before, it needs to be felt and have consequences.

Thirdly, do you know what? I'd just cut this entirely! It's not serving any purpose to the novel. Any vitally important plot points could be weaved in to the main narrative rather than dumped on the novel's doorstep. Let's just chuck this in the sea.

Stay tuned for the absurdity of Chapter 1!

If you have insights as to why this chapter is terrible, let me know as a comment below!