Thursday, September 25, 2008
Operation NaNoWriMo Plot Organization!
Yup, its that time of year again, filled with writing and all sorts of madness and stress. NaNoWriMo is drawing near.
For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month (but should really be “International“). People around the world have exactly 30 days to complete a 50,000 word novel. A very few of you already know I did this last year, but for the rest who had no clue until this moment, scroll down a ways to Chapter I, and you’ll catch the gist of it :)
Anyways, I think for November I will keep this blog mainly as a log for the novel. If enough people are actual interested, I may even post the chapters themselves here.
A lot of you (as in about three people) have been asking, what’s the plot? Well…like any good science fiction novel, the plot will probably end up being huge, which is good. More to write about=higher word count. The idea was actually inspired by a random thought the week “the end was nigh” and there was supposed to be a black hole, etc.
I’ll try to explain the basics:
Perhaps a hundred years or less from now, we decide to take these little cautious experiments we perform now and get to the real point--make it bigger, figure out what’s really going on in this universe, simply because we can. Of course, as always this is a bad idea, and we end up blowing a sort of hole in the universe (black or “white“, I haven’t decided yet--probably black to make it easier) a little too close to home. We underestimate our own capacities and realize if we don’t get the hell outta Dodge, we’re all fucked. At this point there’ll be a convenient (and not wholly unrealistic) ship capable of traveling at or above the speed of light. Anywhere we can find in this galaxy would have to be only temporary, so we decide to send a ship full of variously talented people through the hole to hopefully find a solution on the other side while the rest of the world tries to figure out what else we can do. What our main characters end up in is a sort of new but extremely rapidly growing universe so different from our own that even the very concept of time is skewed. A planet here similar to Earth only in that its main inhabitants are of near-equal intelligence is possibly their only hope.
Writing this little blurb of information has actually given me a couple new ideas :D Especially for the ending…oooooh, I like it, yisyis, I do.
People very much interested in this project are completely free to give advise or things they think would do well in the story-line. Several of the main characters will be based off of YOU, people of the Circle; some already now who they are/will be, but most will probably have no clue. If you really really really want to be in it, just talk at me anytime and I’ll come up with a place for ya (if I haven’t got one already planned for you :P).
But I’ve written enough, methinks. I’m off to bed.
(Please leave comments on this one--I really need to get some regular feedback on this kind of thing)
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Short Fiction 5: Guest Visit
At last, something new :) The first line (rewritten of course) actually started out as a poem, but I guess I wasn't inspired enough to finish, so it turned into this instead. Not too bad. Almost 900 words in about 20 minutes. Enjoy :)
_________________________________________________
He could see three photos on the mantle, garlanded with fake leaves and autumn branches in vibrant orange, far too extravagantly perfect to be real. They glistened vaguely in the dim light, twinkling like a secret in a person’s eyes, when you know they’re lying but aren’t stupid enough to say you noticed. His eyes settled on each frame first rather than each photo, for each frame was the same: leather-bound, aged without aging, a stale sort of earthy color that nearly matched the autumn plastic things around t, but not quite.
In the first photo, a tiny child sat perched on a man’s shoulders, like a tower holding up a smiling balloon in some distant city., except it was only a lawn. An empty lawn that seemed to go on forever, but he knew better; it only went as far as they money went before it turned into someone else’s property. The child was smiling. The man was grinning. Neither of their eyes glistened as they should have in the brightness of summer. Behind the camera, he could almost see the near-emotionless photographer that held the camera perfectly still and demanded silly words from them to force a smile. So someday they’d look back and grin once more and say, “How happy we were then, yes yes.” So someday they think, How horrid she was. It didn’t interest him much.
The second photo was a little smaller and more in the backdrop, as if it were just an afterthought to fill a space. An unnecessary little thing that didn’t matter much, but the frame’s so nice and matches so well. He couldn’t see much in it for how many people stood within the leather boundaries. At least 15 people filled the photo to the brim with pointless sameness, each man, woman, and child clothed in the same monotonous royal blue. It reminded him of the photo they had been forced to take in the navy, with each man sporting the same new baldness and the same blue and white outfits that they would never wear again. None of them smiled then (and wouldn’t have enough if they could have), and most of the faces in the picture didn’t smile now, either. Not really, anyways, and it was hard to tell. Maybe among the sameness was a secret smile, too far off to really notice, but enough to matter all the same. He thought he could almost see one, but it danced away like a pixie and into the dust. Maybe just his eyes going. Probably. Maybe.
A third matched the second, but not quite in content, only in that the two frames were placed symmetrically to each other, facing one another endlessly. This one was a little different, older (truly), and the leather frame couldn’t entirely hide the tiny peak of frayed edge in the left corner. This time the smiles weren’t present at all, not even false ones, making the wedding scene very strange. A funeral in white and gray, more like. A funeral for freedom and happiness, he guessed. He was the same man in the first photo, only younger and strangely sadder. Darker, even. As if the world of that time had been in a constant shade, a mild tint of blackness everywhere you went. He knew of the woman’s sadness; he’d seen it a thousand times over from a thousand photos taken in a hundred different years and times and eras apart from his. The man’s was stranger. He somehow doubted the little gray man that stood stoically beside his mistress himself knew of his own depression. Consciousness, he knew, came with time and calmness and acceptance.
He stood to gaze more closely at the photos, hands clasped behind him in a doctor’s studying clasp as he leaned forward into the mantle, eyes flitting back and forth from frame to glinting frame, leaf to plastic leaf.
A bare little spot where the dust hadn’t quite settled in yet caught his gaze. A line of slight darkness between colored leaves. A void. A place that needed filling but never was, and so was merely covered up.
“Something else used to be here,” he mentioned casually, as any guest in a stranger’s home would be: prying, curious, yet with mild uncaring that seemed to also mention that the answer wouldn‘t be judged too harshly if it was given quietly. She paused, thought about this, then took the deal.
“Oh, nothing’s missing,” an answer from the kitchen echoed off shining white tile, forced nothingness in its ring. “Well, there used to be another one there, but the frame broke so we took it down. It was a while back.”
Ah. So that was it.
It was a missing person, not a missing photo. A void. And place that needed filling, but couldn’t be, so it was covered up. He frowned at the three tiny panes of glass.
“I hope you fix it soon.” Silence from them both a moment. “It would be a shame to leave something so beautiful so empty.”
In all his observations, he didn’t hear the silent mouth form the words in truth behind his back.
If ever it was beautiful to begin with.
_________________________________________________
He could see three photos on the mantle, garlanded with fake leaves and autumn branches in vibrant orange, far too extravagantly perfect to be real. They glistened vaguely in the dim light, twinkling like a secret in a person’s eyes, when you know they’re lying but aren’t stupid enough to say you noticed. His eyes settled on each frame first rather than each photo, for each frame was the same: leather-bound, aged without aging, a stale sort of earthy color that nearly matched the autumn plastic things around t, but not quite.
In the first photo, a tiny child sat perched on a man’s shoulders, like a tower holding up a smiling balloon in some distant city., except it was only a lawn. An empty lawn that seemed to go on forever, but he knew better; it only went as far as they money went before it turned into someone else’s property. The child was smiling. The man was grinning. Neither of their eyes glistened as they should have in the brightness of summer. Behind the camera, he could almost see the near-emotionless photographer that held the camera perfectly still and demanded silly words from them to force a smile. So someday they’d look back and grin once more and say, “How happy we were then, yes yes.” So someday they think, How horrid she was. It didn’t interest him much.
The second photo was a little smaller and more in the backdrop, as if it were just an afterthought to fill a space. An unnecessary little thing that didn’t matter much, but the frame’s so nice and matches so well. He couldn’t see much in it for how many people stood within the leather boundaries. At least 15 people filled the photo to the brim with pointless sameness, each man, woman, and child clothed in the same monotonous royal blue. It reminded him of the photo they had been forced to take in the navy, with each man sporting the same new baldness and the same blue and white outfits that they would never wear again. None of them smiled then (and wouldn’t have enough if they could have), and most of the faces in the picture didn’t smile now, either. Not really, anyways, and it was hard to tell. Maybe among the sameness was a secret smile, too far off to really notice, but enough to matter all the same. He thought he could almost see one, but it danced away like a pixie and into the dust. Maybe just his eyes going. Probably. Maybe.
A third matched the second, but not quite in content, only in that the two frames were placed symmetrically to each other, facing one another endlessly. This one was a little different, older (truly), and the leather frame couldn’t entirely hide the tiny peak of frayed edge in the left corner. This time the smiles weren’t present at all, not even false ones, making the wedding scene very strange. A funeral in white and gray, more like. A funeral for freedom and happiness, he guessed. He was the same man in the first photo, only younger and strangely sadder. Darker, even. As if the world of that time had been in a constant shade, a mild tint of blackness everywhere you went. He knew of the woman’s sadness; he’d seen it a thousand times over from a thousand photos taken in a hundred different years and times and eras apart from his. The man’s was stranger. He somehow doubted the little gray man that stood stoically beside his mistress himself knew of his own depression. Consciousness, he knew, came with time and calmness and acceptance.
He stood to gaze more closely at the photos, hands clasped behind him in a doctor’s studying clasp as he leaned forward into the mantle, eyes flitting back and forth from frame to glinting frame, leaf to plastic leaf.
A bare little spot where the dust hadn’t quite settled in yet caught his gaze. A line of slight darkness between colored leaves. A void. A place that needed filling but never was, and so was merely covered up.
“Something else used to be here,” he mentioned casually, as any guest in a stranger’s home would be: prying, curious, yet with mild uncaring that seemed to also mention that the answer wouldn‘t be judged too harshly if it was given quietly. She paused, thought about this, then took the deal.
“Oh, nothing’s missing,” an answer from the kitchen echoed off shining white tile, forced nothingness in its ring. “Well, there used to be another one there, but the frame broke so we took it down. It was a while back.”
Ah. So that was it.
It was a missing person, not a missing photo. A void. And place that needed filling, but couldn’t be, so it was covered up. He frowned at the three tiny panes of glass.
“I hope you fix it soon.” Silence from them both a moment. “It would be a shame to leave something so beautiful so empty.”
In all his observations, he didn’t hear the silent mouth form the words in truth behind his back.
If ever it was beautiful to begin with.
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