Short fiction -- writing exercise.
One of the reasons I'm coming back to LJ is that I'm at the point where I really ought to get going on all of the things I want to do with my life (there comes a time in every life where you have to stop putting things into your bucket list, and start doing them, or there is no point in having a bucket list in the first place) -- and, I finally have the energy again where I can at least try to.
One of the things I want to do, do properly I mean, is writing. Fiction, and not just opinion, which (let's face it) I do anyway quite thoroughly unasked.
So: One of the gifts I've gotten from Beloved Husband is StoryCubes. (https://www.storycubes.com/ ) In fact, I think I have all of them now. (Overkill, maybe, but hey.) And I wanted to use those as a daily short-fiction exercise.
Roll 9, drawn at random out of my Great Bag O' StoryCube Goodness, arrange them, and write.
So here is effort #1. It has had all of one draft. Expect great variability.
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Tim woke that morning with a percussive music in his head.Hard to say why, and hard to say what, exactly, except that it had a sharp, driving beat that just wouldn't let him alone. His whole day became the game of it, and an attempt to keep up with it -- tapping his desk, tapping his pen (much to office annoyance), kicking his chair, flicking sheets of paper sharply. He disregarded all the frowns in his direction; the beat felt so much more important. More and more important, in fact -- as the day went on, rather than fading instead it seemed to take over.
By the time he left work, he was slapping lamp-posts and car wing-mirrors, kicking fences, picking up sticks and snapping them across every hard object in his path.
He didn't even really notice when he hit the glowing egg. Not until it cracked.
It hadn't registered. The sight had been unimportant, only the beat in his brain worthy of his concentration. It had only been noticed as "solid object which I can hit." And hit it he had -- two sideways kicks (proud, in some corner of his mind, of his own coordination), a spin, and a good solid whack across it with his stick, all in the service of the beat. But the crack of his stick across what was indubitably shell was followed by a long crack of the thing itself, and somehow that sound cut across everything his day had been.
He felt suddenly very cold. Rather an irony, that would turn out to be shortly.
He backed away. Now the beat was gone. Now he stared. It was as large as he was -- larger, even -- how had he not noticed? -- and as out of place on the pavement as a Bengal tiger would have been at his work cafeteria. It glowed dull orange, except for the widening red slash across it. Something moved inside.
Now he wanted to run, except that somehow he couldn't.
The egg hatched.
...
Nobody ever did find out what happened to Tim. He'd left work, after a day of annoying people, and just never made it home. Nobody knew what melted a 6-foot wide and 50-foot long gash into (and through) the road, either. It was, after all, a very quiet street of tiny local businesses which all closed at around 5 pm, and could not afford and did not rate having their own CCTV.
Fortunately for everyone but Tim, the World-Turtle managed to -- well, not quite become airborne, since airborne is after all entirely the wrong word for a thing that swims through dimensions. But it found the dimensional lift that it required after only a very short crawl, and being one of the lucky ones headed out off the planetbound shore into the Great Rift, where it might find others of its kind to stack with and eventually, maybe, bring another world into being.
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I don't know if I will in fact manage this daily. I do know that a lot of it will be complete crap. Mostly I am putting this up publicly so that (a) I have a record of effort, and (b) I have some pressure on me to keep doing it.
Ignore it, or don't. YMMV.
One of the things I want to do, do properly I mean, is writing. Fiction, and not just opinion, which (let's face it) I do anyway quite thoroughly unasked.
So: One of the gifts I've gotten from Beloved Husband is StoryCubes. (https://www.storycubes.com/ ) In fact, I think I have all of them now. (Overkill, maybe, but hey.) And I wanted to use those as a daily short-fiction exercise.
Roll 9, drawn at random out of my Great Bag O' StoryCube Goodness, arrange them, and write.
So here is effort #1. It has had all of one draft. Expect great variability.
-------------
Tim woke that morning with a percussive music in his head.Hard to say why, and hard to say what, exactly, except that it had a sharp, driving beat that just wouldn't let him alone. His whole day became the game of it, and an attempt to keep up with it -- tapping his desk, tapping his pen (much to office annoyance), kicking his chair, flicking sheets of paper sharply. He disregarded all the frowns in his direction; the beat felt so much more important. More and more important, in fact -- as the day went on, rather than fading instead it seemed to take over.
By the time he left work, he was slapping lamp-posts and car wing-mirrors, kicking fences, picking up sticks and snapping them across every hard object in his path.
He didn't even really notice when he hit the glowing egg. Not until it cracked.
It hadn't registered. The sight had been unimportant, only the beat in his brain worthy of his concentration. It had only been noticed as "solid object which I can hit." And hit it he had -- two sideways kicks (proud, in some corner of his mind, of his own coordination), a spin, and a good solid whack across it with his stick, all in the service of the beat. But the crack of his stick across what was indubitably shell was followed by a long crack of the thing itself, and somehow that sound cut across everything his day had been.
He felt suddenly very cold. Rather an irony, that would turn out to be shortly.
He backed away. Now the beat was gone. Now he stared. It was as large as he was -- larger, even -- how had he not noticed? -- and as out of place on the pavement as a Bengal tiger would have been at his work cafeteria. It glowed dull orange, except for the widening red slash across it. Something moved inside.
Now he wanted to run, except that somehow he couldn't.
The egg hatched.
...
Nobody ever did find out what happened to Tim. He'd left work, after a day of annoying people, and just never made it home. Nobody knew what melted a 6-foot wide and 50-foot long gash into (and through) the road, either. It was, after all, a very quiet street of tiny local businesses which all closed at around 5 pm, and could not afford and did not rate having their own CCTV.
Fortunately for everyone but Tim, the World-Turtle managed to -- well, not quite become airborne, since airborne is after all entirely the wrong word for a thing that swims through dimensions. But it found the dimensional lift that it required after only a very short crawl, and being one of the lucky ones headed out off the planetbound shore into the Great Rift, where it might find others of its kind to stack with and eventually, maybe, bring another world into being.
----------
----------
I don't know if I will in fact manage this daily. I do know that a lot of it will be complete crap. Mostly I am putting this up publicly so that (a) I have a record of effort, and (b) I have some pressure on me to keep doing it.
Ignore it, or don't. YMMV.