Exercise #14 - Four Parts

[jackrabbit]

Exercise #14 - Four Parts

This week's exercise is aimed at being quick and fun. Simply come up with three or four ideas from any genre or style. For each idea, write a page or a few paragraphs as if you'd randomly opened the book to that page. If you've ever pictured a specific scene of a story and didn't want to write the build-up, now is the time.

In the end, you should have three or four pages, each page a snippet of a larger story.

Due Date Friday, March 20th

Entries:

Four Shorts (http://creolened.com/fiction/russell-short14.pdf) (russellmz)
Three Parts (http://creolened.com/fiction/three_parts.pdf) (Creole Ned)

[Creole Ned]

russellmz is first in: Four Shorts (http://creolened.com/fiction/russell-short14.pdf)

[Creole Ned]

My entry will, as usual, be slightly late.

[Arioch]

My entry will be postponed a day or two because of feverish illness. Although maybe feverish illness might actually produce something worthwhile if I just start writing. Hmm...

[Creole Ned]

My entry should be up tomorrow. I'll also have Exercise #15 ready then and remember, I am taking suggestions!

[Arioch]

I think I'll have to miss this assignment. Apparently I can't work with so much freedom, and since my only ideas could be phrased as "highly inappropriate fucking ensues", it probably is for the best that nothing of it will ever see the light of day...

[Creole Ned]

That was kind of like a big ol' tease.

Now there's even more pressure on me to finish mine.

Do people generally prefer more specific exercises?

[Paladin]

I do. A specific theme or plot or character requirement, but not a bunch of requirements in one assignment.

[Creole Ned]

I am totally stumped on this one. I have about half a dozen story bits written in various stages but I'm finding it strangely difficult to jump into a story midway through for one scene -- even if it's one I know I'd have fun writing. I've even thought about cheating by pulling scenes from previous stories I never finished and polishing them up. I'm not quite ready to give up yet but I'm close.

I will have feedback for russell's effort and I encourage everyone else to read his piece and give him your thoughts on it.

[Creole Ned]

Feedback on russell's four scenes:

I'm not going into much detail here because each scene is pretty short.

#1: I feel like I'm getting a novel here in serialized segments. Adding zombies to your future war is an interesting twist.

#2: I like the characters trying to use movie solutions to handle the situation, it's meta but amusing. "imdb movie quote" reads a bit awkward. Maybe remove the "imdb"?

#3: This one has a nicely seedy vibe to it but the cryptic nature of the situation left me unsatisfied. what the heck was this leading to? Is there a larger story for this or is it just something you wrote on the spot?

#4: A nitpick to start. I'd suggest changing:

"There are two kinds of people in this world, people with a zombie plan, and people who don't."

to:

"There are two kinds of people in this world, people with a zombie plan, and people without one."

More zombies. I won't complain, though! I like the twist of an apparent comet disaster at the end.

***

Now I feel guilty that I haven't finished the exercise.

[russellmz]

don't be.

I've even thought about cheating by pulling scenes from previous stories I never finished and polishing them up.

great minds think alike. i cheated by extending some older short story exercise stuff: keep the engine running and the differing point of view for the movie deep impact.

1. clones vs zombies: which sci-fi/horror staple will prevail!?

2. monster stalking a group where everyone's genre savvy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreSavvy). hilarity ensues?

3. keep the engine running: i couldn't figure out what the big bad was going to be. satan? a portal that has to be fed human flesh to keep from expanding or spitting out monsters? or just a broken down population control device that's been broken down for centuries but they keep tossing people in there out of habit?

4. i actually say that first version about zombie plans in real life! i guess the grammatically correct version is

"There are two kinds of people in this world, people who have zombie plan, and people who don't."

[Creole Ned]

My entry will, as usual, be slightly late.
By which I meant "nearly two weeks late".

I wrote three scenes and being an environmentally-minded guy I did a bit of recycling. The first scene contains characters I first wrote about in 1989 and have used in several previous stories. The second is a slightly rewritten scene from an unfinished play circa 1996. The third is completely new but riffs on a common science fiction theme. Enjoy!

Also: zombies.

Three Parts (http://creolened.com/fiction/three_parts.pdf)

[russellmz]

i am going to pretend i'm in a bookstore reading these sections:

night out in the city
when i hit the second part, "personal ad", i thought it was continuing the zombie story :)

i want to know what's up with kevin and why he wears all black and says everything in a toneless voice. i would read on to see what happens and what's behind the door. i like kevin's "slow or fast" comment.


personal ad
i also hate when people jab their finger at my monitor. i like the dialogue and eric tearing down christine's ad pick. i would read on to see what the final ad looked like. needs an example of christine's past plans going awry.

and what's the look?


silence of space
the soggy can sounds a bit weird. is it supposed to be a wrinkly cylinder? needs more mystery to grab the reader. losing signal might be more realistic but i was hoping for something more weird. "it disppeared!" "something appeared and grabbed it!"

maybe if i read further there would be stuff like that but things are too much at the normal stage to grab my interest.

[Creole Ned]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, "soggy can" sucks. It was originally "tin can", then I changed it but meant to change it again and never did. Interesting point on losing signal. I thought it was a good place to end the scene but almost kept going. Maybe I could have had the Galactic Ghoul show up. :P

I should actually have #15 ready today (:o) and will post #16 tonight as well.