I'm writing a story and feel like I'm "telling" too much, but I'm not sure how to "show". What do you think? (excerpt inside)
I'm trying to put a story together. Here's the very first part. I feel like I'm telling too much and not getting inside the character's head, but the story is also supposed to be relatively fast-paced and I don't want to slow things down. Also dialog doesn't appear until later in the story. What do you think?
**
Nate woke up to shaking. This wasn’t unusual in Southern California and Nate quickly estimated the quake to be a 4.5 or so on the Richter scale. He was contemplating getting out of bed to check for damage when the room suddenly lit up with an orange glow. Just as the glow started to fade, the apartment rumbled again.
Nate leapt out of bed and ran to the window, snapping open the blinds in a single motion. There was a column of black smoke rising near the horizon. At first, Nate wondered if it was an explosion at one of the refineries in El Segundo, but he realized the smoke was too close to him to be in El Segundo. But there was a more frightening spectacle that Nate noticed immediately: Los Angeles’ vast orange grid of streetlights had gone completely dark.
With his own apartment lit only in the moonlight, he moved quickly to the kitchen where he stored a small cache of emergency supplies. He pulled the small box out from under his sink and opened it. He had packed some absolute basics: a flashlight, a hand-crank radio, extra batteries, a tiny first aid kit, a bottle of water, and a couple of energy bars. This wasn’t going to last in a prolonged power outage. Nate cursed himself for not being more prepared but he smirked slightly at the idea of most Angelenos scrambling for flashlights that they probably didn’t have.
Nate pulled the radio out of the box and gave it a round of vigorous cranks. It lit up and crackled and he twisted the tuner dial, looking for a talk station that could explain what was going on, but every frequency turned into was dead air. He finally managed to tune in to a faint Spanish-language station but Nate’s Spanish skills were severely limited and he only became more alarmed as he was unable to understand the DJ’s frantic articulations.
Nate grabbed the emergency supplies box and headed back to his bedroom, just as another bright orange glow lit up his apartment. The subsequent roar was almost unbelievable in its volume and the sudden jolt of kinetic energy knocked Nate on his apartment floor. The blasts were getting closer and Nate knew he needed to get out of the apartment as soon as possible. He grabbed a backpack and a jacket, threw the emergency box into the backpack, and opened his closet door. Inside a black box underneath a pile of clothes was Nate’s 9mm Glock 17. He put the gun in his backpack, zipped it up, and ran out of the apartment as another orange glow appeared behind him. The blast shook the apartment complex as he ran down the second story stairs and around the complex’s pool.
The Vermont/Sunset Red Line subway station was only four blocks away; Nate knew it was probably not the best idea to enter a subway station during a power outage but getting underground seemed like the number one priority. Explosions were rocking the city of Los Angeles and Nate didn’t know why.
Posted Dec 29, 2011, 3:03 AM UTC