“I just wanted to say thanks again for inviting me, Neal.”
Neal Osborne looked over his shoulder at the girl in the backseat. “You’re welcome, Genevieve.”
He returned his eyes to the road, hands at two and ten. “Though, to be accurate, it wasn’t my idea. Alexander talked my dad into this trip. Not that I’m not glad we’re all going.”
“Because that was believable,” the red-headed young man beside Neal in the passenger seat piped up.
“I just think it’s a little presumptuous of him to ask, Owen. Eight people at once is a lot, when it’s not his cabin.” Neal steered through highway traffic while talking to his best friend.
“Alex has lived with your family since he was fourteen years old. It’s his cabin.” Owen Truman looked over his shoulder at Genevieve, “Don’t pay any attention to him.”
She smiled. “I don’t mind. I know I’m only invited because I’m Ethan’s sister. It’s not a big deal. I’ve never been to Whistler, so I’m grateful. Is it as pretty as they say?”
“Not as pretty as you,” Owen teased. “But it’s nice.”
“Owen!” Neal gave his friend an elbow while keeping his eyes on the road. “She’s Ethan’s little sister.”
He glanced at the pretty brunette in the backseat briefly, and then continued.
“Sorry, Owen lacks manners.”
“He’s not being rude. I don’t mind. I’m not that little anymore, Neal. I’m only two years younger than you are, remember?”
“So I’d shut up and try not to insult the pretty girl, comrade, unless you think being born in 1979 makes you an old man compared to the kids from the eighties.” Owen elbowed his friend back.
“Ooh, what were the seventies like? Can you tell us about them, grandpa?” Genevieve giggled. Neal blushed.
“I didn’t mean… Never mind. Shut up, Owen!”
All three of them laughed.
“Hey, can we make a pit-stop before Toronto?” Owen asked.
“What’s up?”
“Well, I need to take a leak, and besides, I promised Evan I’d hit a Subway or a Mr. Sub.”
“Late night snack before the flight? That’s a pretty good idea,” Genevieve said.
“Not exactly. I mean, I’m hungry, but Evan and I are scamming Daniel. It’s hard to explain.”
“What do you mean, ‘scamming Daniel?’ What does that have to do with sub sandwiches?” Neal asked.
“Dan’s not too quick on the uptake sometimes. Evan just plans to take advantage of that with a few well-timed bets. Never hurts to improve the odds once in awhile, and I get a cut of the proceeds.”
“That’s a great way to treat your friends!” Genevieve said, trying not to laugh.
Bonus Chapter – Different Car, Same Day
No Man an Island 
4 comments
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January 6, 2008 at 11:16 pm
sonjanitschke
This is much easier on the mind. Getting a nice feel for the characters.
Your writing has improved.
Also, it’s hard to say since I’ve read the entire thing, but I’m hazarding that if I was a new reader, I’d find the characters a lot easier to keep track of.
I meant to mention this a coupla times before, but have you considered drawing a family tree since there are so many characters with different relationships?
January 7, 2008 at 3:05 pm
nomananisland
I think it might be a good idea to do a tree and a timeline, at some point.
As for the organization and writing – if there’s anything I pride myself on, it’s the ability to learn from my mistakes. Thanks for your help in that regard.
June 29, 2012 at 1:09 am
wildbow
In reference to the above (4ish year old) comment, I admit I’m having trouble keeping track of characters here. We’ve got Dan, Ethan, Neal, Owen, Alexander and Genevieve as far as name dropping goes, and most get only one brief description that’s kind of hard to pin down. Like, it gets mentioned that there’s a red headed man in the passenger seat and I have to take a second or two to read the surrounding context to pin the name down (Owen?) to the description. Ditto for the six foot tall, two-hundred pound guy in the previous chapter (Ethan?).
June 29, 2012 at 10:29 am
nomananisland
Wow it’s been awhile since I commented here — nice to be back.
In this book I name-dropped in a deliberate way — I showed the character, and then someone (themselves, a friend, etc) verbally identified them. It happens only a line later in each case, but sometimes people don’t quite see that it happened unless they’re reading carefully.
So it’s kind of like a movie — the girl in the back seat says “thanks Neal” to the driver, he turns and says “You’re welcome Genevieve” and then the camera shows the redhead talking, and the driver calls him “Owen.”
I think in my head I wanted to naturally establish names, the way you find them out in real life, because narrating their names (Joe Smith was walking to work the day it all began…) seemed weird to me.
But then, I always think narration is weird — whenever I’m reading a first-person story I wonder “why is this person narrating?” because who are they narrating to? If it’s a diary or a story they’re telling another character it makes sense to me, but open ended narration without a justification always seems strange to me. Stories are communicated to someone, so first person narration is weird because most people don’t narrate their lives to thin air.
There are first-person chapters in this story, but eventually their reason for existence is justified — in one case, it is a journal recorded for historical purposes. I couldn’t handle free-floating narration without a reason, and by the same weird internal logic I couldn’t handle narrated names, they had to be spoken out loud in these chapters.
Oddly enough it looks like I broke that rule in the airplane chapter, on the surface, but you’ll find out later that the third person omniscient narration isn’t what it seems.