WaitMonday night, the Quillians met on Second Life ostensibly to judge the submissions for the Song Inspiration Challenge for July. Those of us who got on early gathered in the meeting room to listen to the Writing Excuses podcast as a group.
Once most of us were finally gathered, the group moderator cracked open the submission box . . .
. . . and discovered that only three people had actually submitted a story.
<sad face>
So we postponed the judgment night until Monday, August 1, 2011. This should give other people more time to complete the challenge.
A Cannibal StarA few months back, I was doing a series of challenges organized by The Quillians, my writing group on Second Life. I managed to miss out on May’s and June’s challenges because of the Project That Ate Summer™ at work. But I’m back for July.
The challenge was simply this: in 250-350 words, write a flash piece inspired by a song. Bonus for guessing the song!
(The bonus is because what we do is gather together one Monday night at 6pm Second-Life Time, read all the entries, and then vote on which ones we like the most. The votes are then tallied, and the winner gets a cash prize (Second Life in-game cash, that is), as do the second- and third-place winners. This time, whoever can correctly guess which songs inspired which stories gets an additional prize.)
Now, I can’t give the name of the piece or the song that inspired it, because I know some of the Quillians read this blog. :) The name comes from the lyrics of the song that inspired it, so I’ll just call this “Name Withheld” for now. I’ll update this with the actual name and the song later. Or make a new post. Whatever.
Once again, when given a word limit, I tend to hit it exactly. But this time, I hit the LOW end instead of the HIGH end. Hm. Interesting. So this is exactly 250 words.
He parked the ship just inside the orbit of the third planet, the one they used to call Jupiter after a long-forgotten myth. The eyes of the worlds were watching, and he wanted a good vantage point, but it would be stupid to endanger himself just to get a story.
He was not the only one here. The proximity sensors indicated several million other ships of various sizes and configurations, some further out, some closer in. All positioned with an unobstructed view of Earth.
Humanity, in all the forms it had assumed and in all the far-flung parts of the galaxies to which they had migrated, still remembered home, or at least some few of them did. Still felt enough nostalgia to mourn—or at least mark—its destruction. But for most of humanity, Earth wasn’t news. It wasn’t even a distant memory. It had been uninhabitable for several billion years. All that was left was just a burnt husk. A useless cinder.
Still, that cinder was the cradle of one of the most powerful civilizations the Cluster had ever known.
He cut unneeded systems to conserve power, unfurled the solar arrays, launched and programmed the recorders to capture all wavelengths at maximum bandwidth and density in three dimensions. Stellar transitions weren’t predictable to split-second accuracy, but it would happen long before he ran out of supplies.
He got comfortable. When Earth was engulfed by the expanding sun, Man would be here to bear witness, after all.
Hope you enjoyed it. I think I really like this piece. I tried making it longer, but I hated it every time I did.
We’ll meet Monday (7/25/11) night and vote. If you do have a guess as to what song this was inspired by, do feel free to guess. I moderate all comments, so if someone guesses, I can just hold them until after Monday, then let them through. I’m interested to see if it’s obvious.
The Quillians‘ challenge for April is to write a scene of no more than 350 words consisting solely of dialogue. No tags (…, he said; …, she asked, …the constable exclaimed), no narration (He raised his eyebrows, her lips were set in a thin line), no nothing except pure dialogue.
Now, I was given a word count, again, so of course, I hit it exactly, almost without trying. It’s sort of getting uncanny.
Since we are given no opportunity to create character, setting, or plot outside of dialogue, this was an interesting challenge. How do you get all those things across while at the same time making it interesting to read as a conversation?
Well, from the get-go, I knew I wanted to do something . . . a little odd. (Who, me?) So once I had the character name you’ll see shortly, <cliché alert> the rest of it just sort of wrote itself </cliché alert>. Phone conversations are, perhaps, the easiest to portray this way, because they’re naturally all dialogue.
So, anyway, I now present my entry to the Quillians’ April Dialog Challenge: "Kit-napped"
"What exactly do you want me to do?"
"If you ever want to see Miss Princess Pants again, bring a trash bag of catnip—the fresh stuff, not that over-the-counter crap—"
"Oh, I would never—"
"Shut up! Bring the goods to the park at Webber and Clouseau at 12:00 sharp. There’s a bench near the sandbox."
"Yes, yes, I know the one."
"Lie on the bench watching the birds."
"What? Watch the—? I don’t understand."
"I’ll be watching. Stay until you’re sure no one else is around, then bury the bag in the sand and walk away."
"But, how will—?"
"If you do what we’ve asked—"
"We? I thought there was only one of you . . . Hello? . . . Oh, sweet goddess, hello?"
"If. You do. What we have asked. Miss Princess Pants will be returned to you, unharmed, by 3:00 pm. Understand?"
"How will—?"
"Do you. Understand. My instructions?"
"Y-yes. Bring a bag of fresh catnip—"
"Primo stuff, remember."
"Yes, high-quality catnip. To the park at Webber and Clouseau at noon and bury it in the sandbox."
"Come alone. If I catch whiff of the K-9s—"
"Oh, no! No. I just want . . . I just want my baby back, safe."
"Then there should be no problem, provided you don’t do anything stupid."
"Can . . . Can I speak to her? Please, I . . . I just need to hear her voice."
"Lady, I don’t have time for—"
"Please! I’ll do anything you ask! I just need to hear my baby to make sure she’s OK."
"Oh, fine. Anything to shut off the caterwauling."
"M-Mom?"
"Princess! Oh, my Bast, Kitten, I’ve missed you so much! Are you OK? Are they treating you all right?"
"Mom, I’m OK, I’m OK. These jerks are assholes, but they haven’t hurt me. Can’t say the same for them, th—"
"All right, that’s enough, you little spitfire. Lady, are you satisfied?"
"Yes, yes! Oh, thank you. You aren’t going to hurt her, are you?"
"Not if you follow our instructions to the letter."
"I’ll be there."
"See that you are. Remember: I’ll be watching you."
And there you have it. Three hundred fifty words of pure dialogue. In what I hope is an entertaining little vignette.
We’ll present them and vote on them probably around April 11. I tied for third on the poem challenge for February. I took first place for the Pot of Gold story for March. We’ll see how I do for April. :)
Oh, and two more things. First, I’d like to thank my friend Patti for the names of the two streets. Once I saw her suggestions on my Facebook page, I knew I had to use them. Oh, the puns . . .
Second, this is the first post I’ve done using Microsoft Live Writer. I have no doubt it’ll look great on WordPress. What I am a little trepidacious about is how it’ll look when it’s cross-posted to LiveJournal. Well, we’ll see, I guess.
For March, our challenge is to write a 250-word flash story that includes the phrase “pot of gold,” but not leprechauns.
Well, begosh an’ begorrah! How are we supposed to do that?
Here’s my submission. :)
“What did we hit?” Jen asked.
I pulled off the road and turned off the wipers. Blood was smeared on the windshield over a spider web of cracks.
“Whatever it was, it was big.”
I squinted out the windshield. The rain was sluicing what was left of the blood away.
“Did you see anything?”
“No,” she said. “I was too busy screaming.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry about it. One of us had to.” I sighed. “I’d better check it out.”
She didn’t protest, and I popped open the glove compartment and grabbed the flashlight.
I got soaked immediately.
I wan’t sure exactly what I was looking for.
Wait. What was that? I shone my flashlight toward where I had seen a glint.
It looked like a Barbie doll. Twisted and obviously dead, diaphanous wings crushed beneath her, still oozing blood, which was washing away in the rain. I bent closer. The tiny female form was blonde, dressed in leaves, and a tiny wand lay near her outstretched arm. And something else . . .
I grimaced, then scrunched up my face and reached out to pick up what she’d been carrying.
Back in the car, Jen turned to me, her eyes wide, and said, “Did you find anything?”
I held up the thimble-sized pot of gold.
“Another fairy? You’d think they’d figure out eventually not to fly so low over human roads.”
I tossed the tiny pot into the glove compartment with the flashlight. At least it would pay for a new windshield.
Exactly 250 words. Don’t give me a word count on something this short unless you want exactly that many words. :)
Who knows, I may come up with something else before the deadline. But this is what came to me in the shower this morning and then wrote during lunch.
The Quillians‘ challenge for April is to write a scene of no more than 350 words consisting solely of dialogue. No tags (…, he said; …, she asked, …the constable exclaimed), no narration (He raised his eyebrows, her lips were set in a thin line), no nothing except pure dialogue.
