Algonkian Pre-event Narrative Enhancement Guide - Opening Hook

[Kate Kiefer Lee]

Opening scene - introduces protagonist and secondary character, sets tone, foreshadows primary conflict, core setting

“Let’s get this over with,” Maggie Caldwell said under her breath as she smoothed her pink silk shirt and sat down beside Pete on her living room sofa for an interview with Joyce Evans from Good Evening America. 
          “Your job is to show Pete’s softer side,” the lead consultant from Re:Imagine, the brand reputation agency they had hired for the apology tour, told her. “We need America to see Pete as a family man, with a beautiful wife and two perfect children. You are warm, you are forgiving, and you are supportive.” Maggie mustered a smile at the “beautiful wife” part. She took wins where she could get them these days. 
          Their six bedroom Victorian house—the dream house they had purchased and renovated the year before—had turned into a war room. Their long oak dining table was peppered with laptops, and PR people wearing earbuds paced around the house shouting about “exclusives” and “impressions” and “influencer strategies.” That morning, Maggie had suffered through four hours of media training, during which a team of lawyers and publicists told her exactly what to say and how to say it (“Too cheerful. Too serious. Too confident. Not confident enough. Smile!”). They dressed her, slathered her face in makeup, glued fake lashes to her eyelids one by one using tiny tweezers, and directed her every move. 
          “You should be touching Pete the whole time,” a baby-faced image consultant named Chaz told her. 
          Of course his name is Chaz. 
          “Hand on his leg, arms brushing, just some kind of physical contact at all times. When they ask a tough question and Pete starts to answer, reach for his hand. Not in a ‘You need my help with this’ kind of way, and definitely not in a ‘Don’t say that’ kind of way, but more in a ‘You’re doing great and I’ll love you forever’ kind of way. Make sense?”
          Maggie would almost certainly love Pete forever, but it was hard to forgive this misstep. She had sacrificed a lot, including her own career as a journalist, in order to make his dream of playing for the National Baseball League come true. Now, only two years later, it was all slipping away because of a stupid mistake. 
          The Atlanta Daily Paper article was still spread out on the kitchen counter. She had memorized the front page: A large photo of Pete smiling up at the stadium lights right after he hit a record-breaking home run, accompanied by the headline “NBL’S GOLDEN BOY PETE CALDWELL PERMANENTLY BANNED FOR STEROIDS.” The story was so long it continued on two more pages. This was the first crackdown since the NBL had enacted its new zero-tolerance doping policy, and it was clear the commissioner of baseball intended to make an example out of Pete and the Atlanta Hammers. According to the Caldwell family’s official statement, it wasn’t steroids Pete had taken, but “supplements designed to improve muscle recovery.” Maggie hadn’t even asked him for the whole story—she had her suspicions and didn’t want them confirmed. Besides, he would broach the subject if he really wanted her to know. 

[obiobi]

_Alice. Talk to me. Whatever it is, we will get through this, like we always have. You are not alone._
My psychiatrist told me this during our last session at his office in downtown Los Angeles. It was around eight o’clock on the morning of November 9th. I was lying supine on a tufted sofa, elbows at my sides, the sun shining fiercely in the sky. I called him Stein, though everyone else referred to him as Dr. Costen. He was trying to peel my brain, tinker with my defective mind like he had done so many times before. But that day, for the first time, he couldn’t get what he wanted from me. Not a damn thing. 

The thought comes to me as the taxi lurches forward, its engine growling in protest as we crawl through the streets of Kenwood. My stomach knots tighter with every mile, the familiar landscape rising up, swallowing me whole. Ten years—ten long years since I left this city behind, yet the weight of it presses down on me, cold and sharp, like it never really let me go. The cab windows fog slightly from the heat, turning the view outside into a hazy blur of redbrick, iron railings, and graffiti-scrawled alleyways. I press a finger to the glass, wiping a streak clear, but the scene beyond is just as muted as before, like I’m looking through a dirty lens.

I’m back.

Chicago hasn’t changed much, or maybe I just can’t see beyond my thoughts. The taxi bumps over a pothole, jostling me, and I glance out at the snow-choked streets, the slush grinding under the tires. We pass sagging three-story walkups, their bricks darkened by decades of soot and salt, the kind of buildings that lean into the wind like they’re bracing for another bitter winter. Even the air smells the same—burnt pretzels from a street cart mixing with diesel and old snow. It’s a smell that sticks to your clothes, a reminder that this place never lets you forget.

The driver glances at me in the rearview, his eyes shadowed under a Cubs cap, but I ignore him, watching the familiar landmarks spring out at me, dragging me into memories I thought I’d buried. There—on the corner of South Drexel—the liquor store. That cursed store Janice stumbled out of more times than I can count, her breath sour with bourbon, her eyes glazed like she didn’t know she had daughters waiting for her at home. Or maybe she did, and that was the problem. She’d come back with bottles, enough to last a week if she paced herself, but she never did. She was always trying to drown something out, a scream inside her that we could never hear but felt in every slap, in every cruel word, in every night she didn’t come home. I always wondered what she was trying to silence, what desperate scream echoed in her head, the one that none of us could hear but all of us felt. It doesn’t matter now, does it? 
The cab hits another pothole, and my hand skids over the cracked leather seat, catching on a split seam. I dig my fingers into the torn cushion, feeling the damp foam underneath—spongy and cold. It reminds me of decay, of flesh eaten from the inside out, and suddenly, I see Janice in that hospital bed, her skin yellowed, her breath rasping like broken glass. I swallow hard, forcing the memory back down, but it sticks in my throat, sharp and bitter. 
I tell myself I’m OK. 
We roll past my old high school. Kenwood Academy. The bricks are darker now, streaked with time and neglect, but it’s still the same place. I can see myself there, in the gymnasium after we’d sneak out of class, fueled on our juvenile highs. My crew was here—Doug, Robyn, Heather—juveniles with dreams bigger than this city, bigger than their broken homes. And then there was Mark. I haven’t thought about him in years––a forced proposition––but the sight of the school hits me like a punch to the chest, sharp and sudden. We were so young, stupid with love, or whatever we thought love was. I was just a kid, and so was he, but we clung to each other like lifelines, like we could drag each other out of this place. He made me feel like I mattered in a world that didn’t want us. He had all these big ideas, dreams of traveling the world. He’d talk about it endlessly—Monaco, always Monaco for some reason. 
I force a laugh, imagining him there now, maybe living that life. Maybe with someone who wasn’t so broken, someone he didn’t have to save, someone who didn’t just… disappear. I left him with no warning. One day I was there, under the Belmont Overpass, his lips on mine, his hands in my deep brown hair, and the next, I was gone—on a plane to London, leaving behind everything we’d built in those short few years, or thought we had. I tell myself he’s forgotten me, that he’s too smart, too driven to hold on to someone who shattered him the way I did. Maybe he’s in Monaco right now, drinking his martinis, laughing with a beautiful blonde. And he’s long since wiped me from his mind. That thought—it brings me comfort. He deserves to forget me. He deserves better.
The cab jerks to a sudden stop, slamming me forward. My hands hit the cold plastic partition with a thud, the impact vibrating up my arms. For a second, I sit there, frozen, the stale heat of the cab pressing against my skin. My heart is racing, my breath shallow.

I glance up, and the driver is staring at me through the rearview mirror. His gaze lingers, steady, searching, and it sends a prickle of unease across my skin.

What does he want? Why is he looking at me like that?

“You need help with your bags?” he asks finally, his voice rough, gravelly, but not unfriendly.

“No,” I say. “I’ve got it.”
He nods, his face unreadable, then shifts back in his seat, staying where it’s warm. He doesn’t say anything else, but I feel his eyes on me as I open the door. 
The cold hits me instantly, sharp and brutal, searing my lungs. It’s the kind of cold that doesn’t just skim the surface—it burrows deep, sinking into your bones. My boots crunch against the thin layer of snow on the sidewalk, and I pause for a moment. 
I’m not ready for this. For any of it.
The building is right in front of me, redbrick and solid, its windows dark and empty. My chest tightens, and I can feel the weight of it—the why. The reason I’m here. I move to the trunk, pulling my bag out with numb fingers. The handle is icy, and it stings, but I barely feel it. I can’t feel much of anything right now. The driver is still watching me, his face half-hidden in shadow, but I don’t look at him. I don’t say goodbye. I just turn away, dragging my bag behind me as the wheels catch and stick in the snow.
My toes are already numb in my heels, and I curse myself for being stupid enough to wear them. Eight years in Los Angeles have mollycoddled me. I’d forgotten how this kind of cold doesn’t just sting. 
The weight of it all—this place, this moment—is crushing.
And yet, I keep walking.
 

[butlerhouses]

Hello, from John Farrington. Here is the opening chapter to UNKNOWN DIRECTION. It introduces a major antagonist and the core wound.

UNKNOWN DIRECTION OPENING CHAPTERS 1-2.docx

[Katie C]

“Your stance is still too spread out, Kate,” Hassland said, snapping my ankles with his wooden sword like he was a gods-damned prison warden. 

“Do that one more time and I swear-” I began to growl, just as he swiped again for my ankle, hitting his mark a second before I could pull it away. I stumbled to the side, catching myself with my own wooden sword to keep from toppling into the dirt. 

Hassland gave me an amused smile. “See. Told you your stance was too wide.” 

I glared at my brother as I propped myself back up, shuffling my feet closer together this time.

He paid no mind to my scowl, the expression more common on my face nowadays than a smile. His brown eyes were still narrowed at my feet. “It still doesn’t look right. Do you always stand that way?”

“Hassland,” I barked, snapping him out of his focus. He held up his hands in defeat and turned back towards the elegant ebony manor that loomed behind us. 

“Right. Sorry. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. Have you seen Father today by the way? He wasn’t even at breakfast.” Hassland was still staring at the House of Hands, as if asking the building instead of me. He was distracted. He’d been distracted all morning. That or infuriatingly focused on one insignificant, stupid thing, like my fighting stance. 

“No. And why do you care?”

“Dunno. I just-” He paused, scratching the back of his head, his eyes still glued to the manor, to the exact window that belonged to my father’s study. Which was dark. Like it had been all week. “He’s just been gone a lot more recently, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know, Hassland,” I sighed, my mind now just as distracted as his as I picked at a piece of mud that’d found itself crusted to one of my blades. “Honestly, I find it peaceful. No reason to question it.”

“I guess,” Hassland said softly, turning back to me. But that was Hassland. He had to question everything. Stick his nose in everything. And it’d only ever gotten him in trouble. 

“Can we just get back to sparring? It’s hot and I’d rather not spend any more time out here than I have to.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Hassland mumbled, turning back to me. His gaze lit up as it crossed my feet. “Hey, your stance looks better!”

Every bit of strength I had kept me from rolling my eyes. Instead, I just gave him a forced smile, not eager to have his laser focus turned back onto my footwork. Even if I hadn’t moved an inch since he last glanced at me. 

For the next hour, we hardly spoke, only spun and ducked and jabbed at each other, taking a second only to breathe or pull ourselves back up off the ground. It was after one particularly long sparring match that I finally got a hit on Hassland. He’d miscalculated my speed, assuming I wouldn’t have enough time to twist out of his swipe for my right side. But I had, and I came back swinging for his left side now exposed.

I’d like to say I hit him harder than I’d meant to, but quite frankly, that’d be a lie. After the two raps at my ankle and the several more whacks I’d received during our sparring match, I’d been a little too pleased to finally get to show him how much a wooden sword could actually hurt. 

He barely had time to breathe out the word, “shit” as he doubled over, the air squeezed from his lungs like water from a wet rag. 

“King of Reih, Katerina, don't you think that was a bit hard for training?” Hassland said, his voice a pathetic mix between a wheeze and a whisper. 

“Sorry, it got away from me.” 

“Liar,” he mused, his face still contorted in pain as he rubbed his side. I didn’t bother defending myself. I only dusted off the wooden practice blades that almost perfectly matched my steel ones slung across my bed right now. 

“Katerina,” our father’s voice cut through the sound of men sparring around us, making me jump. “The king is here asking for you.”

Both Hassland and I tensed. I whipped my head around to face our father, but before I could open my mouth to ask why, he cut me off with a sharp wave of his hand. 

"Don’t keep him waiting,” Father said, his tone about as warm and lively as a four-day-old corpse. 

So much for his peaceful absence I’d been growing to enjoy.