Writing

It’s impor­tant to open with a strong hook, espe­cial­ly in a short sto­ry. I did fif­teen short sto­ries in the month of May, for a chal­lenge on For­ward Motion, a web­site for writ­ers. Here are the open­ers (ie, the first para­graphs) from thir­teen of them. Any of them make you want to read on?

1. Lit­tle brown pots on the south win­dowsill gave off smells of earth and damp. Two of them had sprouts already pok­ing through the dirt. Over by the sink, Claire was trim­ming green onions from one of the pots she’d already har­vest­ed. The knife was sharp, its blade a frac­tal of infi­nite length, and when the sun caught its edge it winked rain­bows at her.
2. “Faith will lead you home,” said Ingraham.
   “Faith will lead you in cir­cles, ever wider, ever fur­ther from the truth,” said Yasht, her voice muf­fled by her mask. “I nev­er under­stood faith.”
3. “There was a woman, see,” said Riley, “and she was the most beau­ti­ful thing you’ve ever laid eyes on.”
4. “I don’t get it,” said Sam­my. Mist rolled away from him in all direc­tions, pale and formless.
5. The water had reced­ed, the dry spell of sum­mer wash­ing once more across the land, and Esau’s raft had beached in a thick­et of high-and-dry reeds already brown­ing under the glare of the sun. Where frogs had so recent­ly blat­ted their trib­utes to the rains was silence, the ani­mals hav­ing bur­rowed into mud to wait, entombed, for the rains to return in a year.
6. For nine days the sky itself had burned, and even now, five years lat­er, John did­n’t like sun­sets. But Miko did, and he was­n’t stub­born enough to argue his way around her insis­tences, so they sat on the black­end con­crete stoop and watched the sky light up all over again.
7. Emer­son reached over to select a disc from the rain­bow assort­ment of jew­el cas­es on his side table, and the world shiv­ered. He hes­i­tat­ed, watch­ing the shad­ows swing from side to side as the flu­o­res­cents over­head swayed like metronome arms, tick­ing away the sec­onds left in his life. Run for the door­way? Did that even work, or was it an old wives’ tale?
8. Before the great par­ley, the drones arrived, seeds that plum­met­ed to earth and unfurled vast lung-wings to col­lect and con­vert solar ener­gy into elec­tric­i­ty and breath­able atmos­phere. It would­n’t last long–the sun’s wind was pow­er­ful now, blast­ing shreds of the star itself away–but it did­n’t need to. This was a vis­it only, a final look around at the old home, the ori­gin world.
9. Kuiper Belt for­est comets reach­ing for the bright star in the mid­dle of the sky, daz­zling if you looked right at it but only bare­ly bright enough to cast a dim shad­ow when the gro-lites were shut off for the “night”, and Eleanor thought, I’ve spent half my life in the ghet­to. If the hot worlds shuf­fling their feet on the sun’s doorstep were the reju­ve­nat­ed core of a city, then the cometary haloes were its dock dis­trict, full of rough-and-tum­ble vig­or, tran­sient labor, and the hope­ful mad look­ing to score a ride out-sys­tem on ves­sels that more often than not would nev­er leave. Tumult and cat­a­stro­phe had rocked the Prox­i­ma colonies, both attempts at reshap­ing extra­so­lar worlds end­ing in riots, civ­il war, megadeath.
10. She licked her wounds, blood-salty, and let the sun warm her fur. In the mid­dle dis­tance she could hear a brook whis­per­ing over smooth, worn rocks. The fat branch­es of the tree would hold her up. Even if she drift­ed into heal­ing sleep she would be safe here.
11. Mur­ray said, “D’ja see the match last night?” We all shook our heads. Nobody else in the office fol­lows Brit sports; nobody else even [em]understands[/em] crick­et. “Grum­man goes up to bat, see, and Eld­staff pitch­es a” blah blah blah I’m not lis­ten­ing any­more but his voice drones on. He does­n’t get that he’s local col­or, a cov­er for the office in case the bob­bies show up with a war­rant or some­thing. Not that they ever would.
12. I don’t want to say it was a dark and stormy night, because it was­n’t, it was the mid­dle of the after­noon. But con­den­sa­tion cas­cad­ed down like rain from the ragged edge of the nev­er-com­plet­ed dome, and the sun was blocked by the dome’s bulk, and the arc lights had nev­er worked prop­er­ly, spark­ing and flar­ing, super­heat­ing air and send­ing shock waves rum­bling out in grim imi­ta­tion of heat light­ning and rum­bling, echo­ing thunder.
13. Every morn­ing he got up, squeezed the con­trol that left a few liters of rain­wa­ter chug down the pipe from the col­lec­tor on the roof, and washed his face and hands and shaved his head in the chipped white bowl. Ablu­tions done, he ges­tured to the haus­frau for the pre­vi­ous evening’s news, and let her sooth­ing voice guide him to the kitchen, where he pre­pared toast and mar­malade, then out onto the sun porch where he sat in a skele­tal wire chair and watched last night’s weath­er dis­ap­pear out over the waters.

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Quoth the Gen­er­a­tor: The sto­ry’s pro­ta­gan­ist is female and a clerk. A gun plays a sig­nif­i­cant part in the sto­ry. The sto­ry is set in a rain­storm in the far future. The sto­ry is about revenge.

Title: Two Drag­ons
1300 words

Excerpt:

Slow­ly she came into focus, there in my drowsy head­space: blonde hair pulled back in a pony­tail, green eyes like the ocean, a mole to the left of her chin. She was nei­ther short nor tall. Her blood type was B pos­i­tive and she paint­ed her fin­ger­nails and toe­nails a shade of pink that put me in mind of a cave-dwelling species of orchid, frag­ile blooms unfurl­ing in reflect­ed moonlight.

If you want to see the rest, leave a note in the com­ments, with an email address, and I’ll fire a PDF your way.

…in my FM Writ­ers chal­lenge is set in the far future. How far? About sev­en and a half bil­lion years, I think.

The Par­ley (you’ll need the pass­word; it’s earth <– high­light to read .

After falling a lit­tle behind (I was doing a sto­ry every sec­ond day; it was six days since the pre­vi­ous one) I sat down and did up a new sto­ry last night. The gen­er­a­tor gave me The theme of this sto­ry: trag­ic mys­tery. The main char­ac­ters: con­fused cab dri­ver and pious rogue. The start of the sto­ry: dream. The end of the sto­ry: discovery.

Here’s the start of the story:

“I don’t get it,” said Sam­my. Mist rolled away from him in all direc­tions, pale and formless.

“There’s noth­ing to get,” the woman said. “Please, I need silence.” She knelt, her body tak­ing on a per­fect still­ness, the breath­less wait­ing of a stone being worn away by the sea. The mist climbed her body like a thing alive, ten­drils coil­ing snake­like across her shoul­ders, her back, the tat­tooed nape of her neck. Sam­my felt a scream crawl­ing up his throat, watch­ing the only oth­er per­son in this dream­scape being eat­en by fog, like some­thing out of a hor­ror movie.

He swal­lowed, hard, and looked away, his gaze search­ing for a hori­zon that was­n’t there. Grey sky, grey mist, and it all met at the van­ish­ing point, a roil­ing noth­ing­ness that had over­whelmed sense and knowledge.

This is a dream, he told him­self. This is a dream, and I can wake up any­time I want–

Only he could­n’t. The form­less scream was claw­ing its way back up his throat. With an effort that was enough to put sweat on his brow, he forced it back down.

For more: The com­plete sto­ry (pass­word-pro­tect­ed: the pass­word is abi­gail <– high­light to read.

So far I have five sto­ries out of the ten I’ve said I would do this month. Tonight or tomor­row I’ll be doing anoth­er one.

Prob­a­bly tomor­row, since I’m mild­ly hooked on CSI, and it’s a new one tonight.

Here’s a snip­pet from the lat­est sto­ry, “Star Light, Star Bright”:

If the hot worlds shuf­fling their feet on the sun’s doorstep were the reju­ve­nat­ed core of a city, then the cometary haloes were its dock dis­trict, full of rough-and-tum­ble vig­or, tran­sient labor, and the hope­ful mad look­ing to score a ride out-sys­tem on ves­sels that more often than not would nev­er leave. Tumult and cat­a­stro­phe had rocked the Prox­i­ma colonies, both attempts at reshap­ing extra­so­lar worlds end­ing in riots, civ­il war, megadeath.

…in the May Chal­lenge on For­ward Motion. Snip­pets from each one:

Lost and Found

She rubbed [her jaw] absent-mind­ed­ly with her free hand, care­ful to keep the knife as far from her carotid and jugu­lar as pos­si­ble. She’d sliced her­self open once, and the house had chid­ed her to take more care as it glued the wound shut and cloned up a fog of nanites to clean the blood off the floor and counter and walls.

Fiona

All these years and he could­n’t remem­ber the name of the city, could­n’t even remem­ber for sure if it was north of the equa­tor or south, but he remem­bered those lions, great mar­ble beasts carved with such fine detail that on windy days their manes seemed to stir. It was said that a man with avarice in his heart had strayed too near one of the lions, and that his bloody bones had been found the next morn­ing, picked clean and swarmed with flies. It was a pret­ty sto­ry, but Riley was sure it was a local myth.

Pret­ty sure.

After the Mis­sile Rain

Miko had­n’t yet been made when the bombs arced across the sky, so she did­n’t have a lot of the mem­o­ries that John did. She did­n’t remem­ber the worm-tracks in the night sky, for instance, the fine white etch­ings that the mis­siles made as their fist-sized cyber­net­ic brains plucked ran­dom num­bers from the pop and hiss of inter­stel­lar radio and dodged space­borne X‑ray lasers, rail­gun ord­nance, fine sprays of met­al pel­lets trav­el­ing at twen­ty times the speed of sound. She had­n’t seen the flash­es, brighter than a hun­dred suns, that had burned out one of John’s eyes and left the oth­er one scarred so that every­thing he saw was bent dou­ble around a flaw he could­n’t direct­ly see.

Feel­ing accomplished…

I’ve tak­en up a chal­lenge at For­ward Motion to do the “Appren­tice” lev­el for their May chal­lenge. Basi­cal­ly what it boils down to is that I’ve said I’ll try to write 10 short sto­ries (more than 500 words) in May. If things go well, I’ll up myself to “Jour­ney­man” (15 sto­ries instead of 10), but we’ll see how it goes.

The oth­er thing about the chal­lenge is that at least 80% of the sto­ries must come from topics/themes/characters sug­gest­ed by one or anoth­er of a hand­ful of online gen­er­a­tors. Because I rel­ish a chal­lenge, I’m going to try and do all my sto­ries from gen­er­a­tor suggestions.

The one for May the first was:

The sto­ry’s pro­ta­gan­ist is female and a gar­den­er. A knife plays a sig­nif­i­cant part in the sto­ry. The sto­ry is set in a kitchen in the future. The sto­ry is about deception. 

And the sto­ry for it is here (pass­word: fm <– high­light to read).

I’ve sent “Out­side, Look­ing In” to a mag­a­zine, and I’ll be send­ing “Heat Death” to anoth­er one once their read­ing peri­od opens up (May 1^st, so, real­ly, tomor­row). I had some encour­ag­ing words this week­end from a friend who read “Heat Death” at the tail end of a par­ty, and pro­ceed­ed to gush about my writ­ing tal­ent as he read it. He was a lit­tle drunk, but hey, in vino ver­i­tas, no?

Wish me luck!

So I picked up a short sto­ry I’d start­ed in Decem­ber, found an end­ing for it, and put it all togeth­er in less than 1,000 words. It’s called “Heat Death” and I think I’m going to sub­mit it. If you’re inter­est­ed (it’s short–989 words by the counter in OpenOf­fice, 982 by the counter on the BBS), drop me a line.