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Young Writers Society


16+ Language

Chapter 1.1: When Hunter Met Slayer

by DottieSnark


Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language.

With the sun streaking through the back passenger window Sam was just starting to wake when they pulled up to the house. There was a dull ache on his temple from resting his head against the window all car ride, but it wasn’t strong enough to get him to move. In front of him Dean moved around in his seat. Dean had sat in the front seat the entire ride. Typical. Sam always got relegated to the back. It took Dean poking Sam a number of times before Sam opened his eyes. Dean leaned over the seat and smirked.

“Mornin’ Sunshine!” Dean said. Sam had been giving Dean the silent treatment for the last few days and it wasn’t clear if Dean was intentionally becoming more annoying to break Sam or if Sam really was just done with Dean’s shit, but either way Dean was way too cheery for Sam’s tastes this morning.

Sam closed his eyes and shifted onto the back car bench like it was a bed. Sleep didn’t last long, though.

“Sammy! Wake up and get out here,” Dad hollered outside the car.

Sam’s eyes fluttered open. Looking over at Dean, still firmly planted halfway over the seat but now with a stupid looking grin on his face, it was obvious that if he continued to delay it would only be Sam in trouble. Letting out a huge, overdone sigh Sam sat up and finally got out of the car. Dad waited by the walkway, arms crossed and eyes glaring. He didn’t say a word as Sam lazily stepped out of the vehicle and slowly closed the back door, but Dad did start to tap his foot very obviously.

Dad took the lead down the walkway. Their destination was a rickety, old house with chipping paint. It laid in the back of a junkyard. Cars and car parts piled around the yard. Dean peeled off from his brother and father to check out an old Chevy.

“It’s rusted out, Dean,” Dad said.

“Nah, she just needs a little TLC.” Dean ran his hand over the hood, probably catching tetanus while doing so.

Sam and Dad continued up the porch. Dad knocked and opened the screen door. “Bobby!” he said. Dad actually sounded happy for once.

“Come on in,” Bobby Singer’s gruff voice echoed through the halls.

Sam and Dad entered the house. There was a small hallway that they followed to the living room. The wallpaper was peeling. In the living room Bobby sat at a messy desk with too many phones, each labeled with the name of a different government agency. Books were scattered across the floor.

“You give my agent anything he needs,” Bobby said before hanging up a phone. It had FBI labeled on top of it. He looked over at his new guests and smiled. “Glad to see you guys made it here in one piece.” His eyes shifted between Dad and Sam. “Dean?”

“Admiring your junkers,” Dad said.

“He’ll have plenty of time for that over the next few days…how long are you planning on being away anyway?”

Sam walked away from the adults. The room was filled with cases of books. Lore of Demonlogy. History of Witchcraft. Mythology of American Monsters.

Dad and Bobby were both hunters. Monster hunters, that is. They spent their whole lives tracking down the things that go bump in the night, things most people didn’t think actually existed, and killing them. Sam and Dean had been raised in that life after their mother was killed by one of those creatures.

“Not sure,” Dad said. “Don’t think it’ll be more than a week.”

Sam picked up a book off the shelf. It was covered in dust. He blew on it, dust particles flying into the air. Humanoid Creatures.

“See anything interesting?” Bobby asked.

Sam put the book back on the shelf. “Not exactly New York Best Sellers, in here.”

Dean entered the living room before anyone had a chance to reply to Sam. His fingers were black with oil. “You need help around the junkyard?” Dean asked.

“You’ve been teaching this boy mechanics?” Bobby asked, now interested in Dean instead. It wasn’t hard for Sam to wander out of the room unnoticed. He slipped upstairs and checked the second floor of the house out.

Dad was going on another hunting trip, this one apparently too dangerous to bring his sons along. Dean had asked to come along, but Dad told him they’d just slow him down. Dean had pouted but never said a word in argument. Dean never argued with their dad. No, that was Sam’s job.

“Why go at all, then?” Sam had asked. The argument had occurred in their motel room two days ago, back in Oregon. Dad had just finished hunting a coven of witches. He’d taken Dean along him on that hunt, but as usual Sam stayed back at the motel. Dean was eighteen and been hunting with their father on the regular for a few years now. Dad and Dean wanted to start training fourteen-year-old Sam to join their hunts, but he showed little interest. The hunter lifestyle of moving town to town every few weeks was terrible enough as it was.

After the Oregon hunt his family deserved a little R&R, but before they knew it they were packing up to hit the road again. Dad had received a phone call about a hunt in southern California.

Dean had cracked jokes about working on his tan and learning to surf before Dad had dropped the bombshell that the boys weren’t coming along on this one. They’d be staying with their uncle Bobby in a small town called Sunnydale. There was a brief argument but when Dad said stop, Dean predictably did as he was told. He didn’t fool Sam, though. Dean was still angry. So Sam took up the mantle.

“If it’s so dangerous that Dean can’t come, then why are you going alone?” Sam had asked. As much as he hated the hunter life he loved his father more. This hunt sounded too dangerous.

“I don’t get to pick and choose which monsters to hunt,” Dad had said. “People’s live depend on me.”

Sam had tried arguing more, telling his father that he was ruining their lives by risking making them orphans, but that only upset Dad more. Now the topic had moved on to Mom, and Sam was the bad guy for bringing her up.

If that’s what he gets for trying to defend Dean and keep Dad safe then he was better off keeping his mouth shut. Dean, ever the martyr, would lay down his own life before questioning their father’s orders. Sam wasn’t going to live a life like that. If they didn’t care about his wants and needs then he wasn’t going to care about theirs.

Sam wandered down the upstairs hallway. There were three rooms upstairs, and a bathroom. Despite knowing Bobby for many years Sam had never been to his house before. Bobby always met up with Dad for hunts.

Sam entered the room at the end of the hallway. It was a small room filled with another jam-packed bookcase. A small bed fit in the corner of the room. This was clearly one of the guest rooms he or Dean would be staying in. It didn’t seem like much, but it brought a smile to Sam’s face nonetheless. It was his own room, however temporarily that may be for. He’d never had his own room before. He’d spent his whole live traveling from motel room to motel room, sharing it with his dad and brother. The closest he’d ever gotten to his own room before was when Dad and Dean went off on hunts. But this was different. In a room like this Sam could at least pretend his life was normal, if only for a few days.

Footsteps echoed up the stairs and Dean appeared in the hallway.

“There you are,” Dean said.

Sam turned to face his brother but didn’t speak.

“Dad’s about to leave. You should say goodbye.”

He should just walk back into the room and close the door on Dean’s stupid, smug face, forgetting everything that laid behind it. But he didn’t. He followed Dean down the stairs. This was his one last chance to finally get some information from dad and no matter how slim that chance was it he couldn’t just pass on it.

Dean gave Dad a hug. “Just a week,” Dad promised. Experience said that that promise would probably be broken.

Sam waited at the bottom of the stairs. “What, no hug?” Dad asked.

“Are you at least going to tell us what this hunt’s about?” Sam asked, his first words in days.

Dean shot Sam a glare. Everyone wanted him to just shut up and let things be, but Sam couldn’t help himself. This wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair.

“What’s so terrible that you have to abandon us at Bobby’s?” Abandon was probably too strong a word, espeically considering the fact that Sam was actually looking forward to the visit, but it was the only word choice that might make Dad question his decision and finally cop to giving them some information. Either that, or it would piss Dad off even more.

“Sam, stop it,” Dean said..

“Listen to your brother,” Dad warned. “I’m not having this fight again.”

“Whatever,” Sam said and went back upstairs. If Dad wouldn’t talk to him he wouldn’t talk to Dad either.


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108 Reviews


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Reviews: 108

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Sun Aug 25, 2019 5:36 am
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Asith wrote a review...



Here because of "fandom blind friendly" :p

I have to say, as someone who hasn't ever met these characters, you've done a good job of introducing them anew instead of relying heavily on anything previously established. It's one of the reasons I usually avoid fanfiction I'm unfamiliar with, but I'm glad I read this one.

I like the dynamics between Sam, Dean, and their dad that you've introduced. Especially their conflicting sides (although that's the main bit :p). It makes up the bulk of this extract, and I actually think that's a really good thing. Hollow character relationships are really off-putting to me, but the way Sam feels about Dean and their Dad feels really authentic, believable, and enjoyable to read.

There are a few places where Sam's character seems to jump around, but maybe that's just my lack if background knowledge? I found myself being confused as to just how sarcastic, or pouty, or even petty Sam is. It's obvious he has parts of all of these, but how much of each exactly is in the mix is a little hard to grasp. But then again, this is only the opening piece, so I could easily see this being developed later on.

Again, as someone who strays from fanfiction, I'm glad I read this. It actually feels like an interesting story to me -- something I find fanfiction often misses. I think I'm actually going to read more of it, so that's cool :p




DottieSnark says...


Sam and Dean are both *really* hard character to write for because the show has been on the air for 14 years and they've gone through so much character development. Like in the early seasons Sam was the reckless one and Dean was daddy's soilder boy, but now Dean is the PTSD ridden one and Sam is the one who's made peace with his place in the world. Then adding on that this story place nearly 10 years before the show started...well it can be hard to nail them down.

But thank you for pointing that out about Sam. I'll take another look at his characterization and see if I can't make him more conistent in this scene.

I'm glad you like the story and want to read more. Thank you so much for the review. :D



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Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:53 pm
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Zoom wrote a review...



Hi Dottie, welcome to YWS.

This is why I love Sam. Gotta love the Sam tantrums.

A good thing you've done is establish a conflict off the bat (Sam not seeing eye to eye with Dean & John). There are some elements of storytelling where you can get away without them in the opening chapter, but in my opinion conflict needs to be seen as early as possible. So nice job showcasing their relationship dynamics so we can see what their current situation is.

Another thing you're doing well is varying when to use dialog tags and when to indicate the speaker using action. And the dialog itself is good, too. You've got a nice sense of rhythm/pacing.

Some issues I had reading this that I thought I would point out and offer constructive crticism:

1) This might just be my personal reading tastes, but I really dislike flashbacks in opening chapters, only because I need a bit of time to immerse myself in the story and get settled in. When a flashback pulls me out of the opening scene, especially when the flashback didn't even happen that long ago, I start to wonder why we didn't just open with the flashback scene to begin with. To me, what happened in the flashback is where the intrigue lies, because that's where John makes his decision to not invite the boys to the next hunt, and dropping them at Bobby's is just the result of that decision. So my constructive advice would be to open with how the argument started, instead of having to go back and fill us in, and then time hop forward to the drop off at Bobby's. That would keep things linear and concise. Another thing you could do is simply summarise the argument very briefly midscene so that you're not taking us too far away for too long. Otherwise, I didn't really see the strategic benefit of the order you chose.

2) I felt like there was a bit of a POV problem. You've written in third person and the voice feels detatched and neutral for the most part, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except then at points you jumped outside of this framework and the POV became a bit confusing/unexpected. For example:

Dean ran his hand over the hood, probably catching tetanus while doing so.


This piece of narration feels incongrous. I didn't pick up a strong sense of voice from the narrator at any other point in the story, so a joke like this felt out of place and a bit of a stretch.

Dean never argued with their dad. No, that was Sam’s job.


Again, this is odd, because it feels like the narrator is throwing shade at Sam, but in comparision to the rest of the chapter, I didn't feel like the narrator held much of an opinion towards either brother, and things seemed neutral.

Also relating to POV, it was strange that John was refered to as "their father" "dad" "John" interchangably though the chapter. It comes across like multiple people taking turns to narrate the story, because someone who refers to John as "Dad" in one paragraph wouldn't then name him "John" in the next.

So my advice here would be to think about who is telling the story, what point in time are they telling the story, and why are they telling the story at all? Answering those questions can really have a huge benefit with the style of narration. And you don't even need to necessarily have an in-depth answer to all of them. There are many different types of POV and some don't require a "who/when/why", what I'm saying is that you should decide a POV that suits the story and stick to the framework of that POV.

My last point, which normally I don't even care about, is typos. There were just a few too many. Simple editing software can pick those up for you. I'm not saying that you need to go nuts and polish every piece you publish here, but it does make a difference to people's receptiveness to offer feedback if they see you care enough to present clean writing. It really goes a long way.

Also I'm low key mad that Buffy isn't in the story yet. *shakes fist*

Let me know if you continue this!

-Zoom




DottieSnark says...


Hey thanks. I'll take a look at that flashback section again. I kind of don't want to start off a scene earlier, because then I feel like it'll just take too long to get to the main action. I'll see if I can cut the vast majority of that flashback and just summarize it in a couple of sentences.

With the POV, and admittedly POV is one of my bigger issues, I was attempting to write a close 3rd perspective, following Sam. It was originally written in a distance 3rd perspective, so I guess I didn't do as good as a job changing it as I thought. I thought I had changed all the Johns to Dad, but I guess not.

As for the typoes, I've always struggled to find typoes. My brain just literally doesn't notice them without that red squiggly line. That's not an excuse, it's just how my brain works. I've tried so many different sources to help. Recently I discovered text readers can really help, but I admittedly I didn't run this scene through one yet. I'll be sure to do that ASAP.



Zoom says...


No worries!

Yeah text to speech software is definitely a huge help when line editing. I fully recommend that. Microsoft word actually has a really good one.



DottieSnark says...


I just wanted to say thank you again. I edited it and reuploaded the chapter. I think I have a better handle on the close 3rd Sam POV now. I also hope I caught most of the spelling issues, although I wouldn't be surprised if there are still some there. And lastly, I decided ultimately that I wanted to keep the flashback. I did edit it a bit, but I think narratively this the best flow for the piece. Thank you for the suggestion though, and for everything else in the original review.

Oh! And I forgot to mention before that Buffy will be in the next scene, so I hope you can look forward to that. :D




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— Nate