Writing Challenges
This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends was from AC Young: Albert the Conqueror had declared himself king.
My first thought was who's Albert and what has he conquered? There were so many ways I could take this prompt -- and I was between two events for the day job, winding up the bookkeeping for one and getting ready to load for the other. Not exactly a situation that gives you a whole lot of time for exploring several different things.
One of my ideas was a funny story about a cat -- since it really felt like a silly situation, and cats often regard themselves as lords of all they survey. However, I wasn't really up to writing a story -- but I could ask Midjourney for a suitable image -- and to me it just had to be a huge orange tabby Maine Coon Cat to do the idea justice.
But I could also see how it could be the story of a rogue player in an MMORPG, maybe a black-hat hacker who's on a power trip, or buying gray-market mods. Which made me think of Phoenix in Cyberspace.
I wrote out a bunch of ideas for where it could go, but with everything else I was trying to get done (including drafting newsletters and blog posts for the entire time I'd be at our next event), there really wasn't much time to actually develop it. So what I got written was little more than a sketch, thrown together pretty hastily.
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Who Is Albert the Conqueror?
Roger returned to Toni's LAN feeling even more confused than ever. Of course it hadn't helped that his character wouldn't have the background to understand most of what he had overheard of the conversation between the captain and his Number One. So even with a rock-solid reason to be where he could overhear, Roger had been forced by the constraints of staying in-character to pretend a complete lack of interest.
Now there was nothing to do but wait for Toni to get home. He couldn't even try to message her, since revealing he had knowledge his character had no reason to know could lead to questions for which there could be no acceptable answer.
Nothing to do in the meantime but find something to occupy himself. Roger had been teaching himself how to program the antique IBM 360 that was in the basement of the little moon-dome house. It was a purely intellectual exercise, since the machine was as much of a simulation as everything within the storyscape. But debugging his latest program was sufficiently attention-intensive that he was caught by surprise when Toni opened the door.
"Roger, we've got a major problem." Toni's eyes were wide with alarm. "Somebody's gotten hold of some gray-market mods and has been going through Digital Dreams' games, carving out empires."
"So it wasn't just the space opera game." Roger explained about the strange announcement that had been forced through the ship's comms, its internal networks, and what he'd managed to overhear of the senior officers' discussion.
"That was dangerous. If someone noticed that you were listening in, they might take a little more interest in your player account."
"And I was automatically acting like the Navy officer I am, not the farm boy my character's supposed to be." Roger realized just how thin his attempt to cover his actions had been. He'd been lulled into carelessness by the assumption that everyone around him was just there to have fun playing make-believe in a manner acceptable for grown-ups. "So where do we go from here?"
"Right now, Digital Dreams' first priority is going to be kicking the hacker out of their systems and beefing up their security so nobody can pull an exploit like this. That means it might be best if you stay out of the storyscapes for a while, at least until things quiet down."
Roger realized just how serious the situation was - yet at the same time he was also frustrated that this would hamper his ability to find out more about the mysterious woman who looked so much like Martha.
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I did manage to get a story written for this week's Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge. However, the story about Basil Kartvelishvili and the Moon wasn't exactly one of my most inspired bits.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
There will be a new word and picture prompt up at Indies Unlimited on Saturday. Until then, the polls will open tomorrow for voting on the Readers' Choice Award, and will close at 5PM on Thursday.
In the meantime, keep writing.
My first thought was who's Albert and what has he conquered? There were so many ways I could take this prompt -- and I was between two events for the day job, winding up the bookkeeping for one and getting ready to load for the other. Not exactly a situation that gives you a whole lot of time for exploring several different things.
One of my ideas was a funny story about a cat -- since it really felt like a silly situation, and cats often regard themselves as lords of all they survey. However, I wasn't really up to writing a story -- but I could ask Midjourney for a suitable image -- and to me it just had to be a huge orange tabby Maine Coon Cat to do the idea justice.
But I could also see how it could be the story of a rogue player in an MMORPG, maybe a black-hat hacker who's on a power trip, or buying gray-market mods. Which made me think of Phoenix in Cyberspace.
I wrote out a bunch of ideas for where it could go, but with everything else I was trying to get done (including drafting newsletters and blog posts for the entire time I'd be at our next event), there really wasn't much time to actually develop it. So what I got written was little more than a sketch, thrown together pretty hastily.
==========================================================================================
Who Is Albert the Conqueror?
Roger returned to Toni's LAN feeling even more confused than ever. Of course it hadn't helped that his character wouldn't have the background to understand most of what he had overheard of the conversation between the captain and his Number One. So even with a rock-solid reason to be where he could overhear, Roger had been forced by the constraints of staying in-character to pretend a complete lack of interest.
Now there was nothing to do but wait for Toni to get home. He couldn't even try to message her, since revealing he had knowledge his character had no reason to know could lead to questions for which there could be no acceptable answer.
Nothing to do in the meantime but find something to occupy himself. Roger had been teaching himself how to program the antique IBM 360 that was in the basement of the little moon-dome house. It was a purely intellectual exercise, since the machine was as much of a simulation as everything within the storyscape. But debugging his latest program was sufficiently attention-intensive that he was caught by surprise when Toni opened the door.
"Roger, we've got a major problem." Toni's eyes were wide with alarm. "Somebody's gotten hold of some gray-market mods and has been going through Digital Dreams' games, carving out empires."
"So it wasn't just the space opera game." Roger explained about the strange announcement that had been forced through the ship's comms, its internal networks, and what he'd managed to overhear of the senior officers' discussion.
"That was dangerous. If someone noticed that you were listening in, they might take a little more interest in your player account."
"And I was automatically acting like the Navy officer I am, not the farm boy my character's supposed to be." Roger realized just how thin his attempt to cover his actions had been. He'd been lulled into carelessness by the assumption that everyone around him was just there to have fun playing make-believe in a manner acceptable for grown-ups. "So where do we go from here?"
"Right now, Digital Dreams' first priority is going to be kicking the hacker out of their systems and beefing up their security so nobody can pull an exploit like this. That means it might be best if you stay out of the storyscapes for a while, at least until things quiet down."
Roger realized just how serious the situation was - yet at the same time he was also frustrated that this would hamper his ability to find out more about the mysterious woman who looked so much like Martha.
==========================================================================================
I did manage to get a story written for this week's Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge. However, the story about Basil Kartvelishvili and the Moon wasn't exactly one of my most inspired bits.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
There will be a new word and picture prompt up at Indies Unlimited on Saturday. Until then, the polls will open tomorrow for voting on the Readers' Choice Award, and will close at 5PM on Thursday.
In the meantime, keep writing.