[-short fiction, collaboration-]

by Indie

Sara: How did you get here?
Boy: I followed you.
Sara: Impossible.
Boy: I only had to close my eyes the moment you vanished.

Silence for a moment. Sara in her private Wonderland was right to be astonished. “By Invitation Only” was the law of her fantasy realm, yet here was the boy, and somehow he had found a way in.

“Run that way,” Sara pointed off in the direction of the pink sun. He was off immediately. “But he’ll be back,” she thought to herself, “when I turn the path the opposite way.” Now she pondered the uses of a boy in her Wonderland. “He could put the leaves back on the trees.” They were constantly falling to the ground whenever the trees snapped themselves to attention. “Or put me on the slide, in moments I am not.” She slid the blue slide down to the gravelly ground. “Now come back,” she spoke.

“Here I am!” the boy announced, “I found a tablecloth. We can have a picnic!”

“What will we eat?” she smiled coyly, “There’s no food here.” There really was nothing. If Sara became hungry, she merely forgot more of the real world, to notice, moments later, that her socks became striped or a wall sprouted dots in shades of primary colors. The boy went away, then returned a while later with a handful of jelly beans. Sara was trying to catch her breath after swinging a complete Ferris-wheel cycle on the swing. He let the jelly beans fall and helped her, heading off the long strip of breath that looked like a rosy red ribbon flapping in the chaotic wind. What a mad dance it was! Never more than two feet on the ground between the two of them, and sometimes none, and neither in reach of the other - nor the ribbon. But finally they cornered the renegade breath. Sara snatched one end, the boy the other, and they shared it between the two of them. Afterwards, contented and waiting for something to say, they noticed the spot where the jelly beans had fallen. A spiral of cotton candy had sprouted into the strawberry sky!

“You can’t catch me” Sara teased, or maybe it was the boy. They chased each other first one way, then the other, all the way up the candy, pausing for little bites along the way, for the running was making them hungry. When they reached the top they were holding hands and stickily sweet all over.

There they sat, on top of the Wonderland world, breathing their breaths together. “I still would like to know how you slipped into my Wonderland,” Sara persisted.

“It was easy,” the boy answered while glancing down at rainbow meadows. “This whole fantasy is my imagination.”

She smiled with primal joy, and joined his gaze into the fairy-tale lands below, “I knew there had to be a logical explanation.”

Story #377
Indie, © 2005 - 2007 all rights reserved - originally published October 13, 2006 in The Synchronicity of Indeterminancy
Thanks to dark firefly for sharing her photograph with Indie and now with us!

Please see Indie’s other contributions to The PCQ: Hacker Baby, Vicious Pirates , The Great War of 2015

Indie’s blog, The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy, is an experiment in creativity with daily posts of an original one-minute short story inspired by a found photo. All stories are fictional. The idea is based on the Indeterminacy recordings by John Cage, pairing one-minute short stories with random sounds. His daily stories can be found at: indeterminancy.blogspot.com His blog was recently honoured as a Blogger Blog of Note. Congratulations Indie!

about the writer:
Indie is an American - originally from Cincinnati, Ohio - living in Europe since the 80’s. He enjoys avant garde, dadaistic, and surrealistic art, literature and music. He has a special love for comedy. Indie holds a masters in psychology and is employed as knowledge engineer, designing natural language dialogue systems. He’s lucky enough to be married to a wonderful muse and has a son 10 years of age.

[-short fiction-]

by Alexandra Stobrawa

flikr - © 05 - 07

He’d planned everything with the utmost care, bought the ticket, checked the schedule, prepared a printout with the travel instructions, telling him at which station he’d have to transfer from the street car to the subway. At breakfast he’d drank herbal tea instead of coffee, left his apartment on time, without having to rush, made his connection; he felt good, it was peaceful and relaxed. He boarded and sat at an empty seat by the window. That was important, extremely important! Without a window seat his entire travel preparations would have been for nothing. But now he sat there, the street car pulled away and he glued his eyes to the glass - just don’t look at the people, always look at the window, regardless of what happens, do not look at anyone! Listen to the announcements naming the stops: five stops and he would have to transfer; trees, clouds, houses, no people, no people! At the first stop, by all means keep the eyes closed to avoid looking at the people getting on. Stay calm, everything will be all right; he’d thought of everything, planned everything!

He noticed that someone had seated themselves next to him - now don’t fall into a panic - he pressed his long, thin body onto the cold hull of the vehicle - no people!

“Excuse me,” a chubby hand tugged at his sleeve. “How many stops is it to the main station?” Ignore her, just don’t acknowledge her and under no circumstances look at her, don’t look! “Hello?” the tugging became more insistent. “I asked you something.” His limbs stiffened; he rigidly held his gaze on the scratches of the window glass. “Hallo?” The face belonging to the chubby hand forced itself between him and the glass, “are you all right?”

Help! His eyes searched for a new anchor, something inanimate. No face, no! The palm of the chubby hand moved back and forth in front of his eyes. “Hello? Is everything okay? You look so pale.” He had lost, he could no longer avoid the round face. It had already begun, this time with the nose. The nostrils moved slowly upwards, the bridge of the nose became wider, the shrinking eyes sank deeper into the rosy skin that grew rougher by the second, as a light, white fuzz began to form - it was the face of a sow that no longer spoke to him but grunted. If she weren’t so loud the others might not notice. He didn’t dare turn around. I can’t cause any more damage, he thought, and started visibly as a young woman with a child on her arm sat quietly down in the seat opposite him and the grunting sow. No! It was too late to look away. The arms of the child suddenly grew longer, hairier. A long, furry tail snaked its way out of his pants. The little monkey cheerfully climbed all over his mother, whose hair meanwhile spread across her face. Now her jaw jutted out towards him and swelled wider. Her no longer human, fur-covered arm secured the climbing creature from a fall.

How many stops must I go on? Two? Three? No, I can’t stay here that long, I must get out immediately! Before the others notice. Before I’ve done any more damage. He began with uncertain steps to move towards the exit. He tripped over a snake, fell against the horns of a mountain goat and was barely able to duck as a peregrine falcon swooped directly over him. So it’s gotten worse. Now he no longer had to look at them. It was enough to be in the same room with them… Leave, fast! He pulled the emergency brake. The street car braked jerkily and came suddenly to a screeching halt, at which he forced the doors apart and sprang out.

“I knew something was wrong with him. He was suspicious right from the start. Do you happen to know how many stops it is to the main station?” the chubby woman asked.

“Two more. But it’ll be a while before they can start after that emergency brake was pulled,” the young mother answered cordially as her child climbed into the now empty seat by the window.

Alexandra Stobrawa is a German and Polish citizen who speaks German, Polish and English fluently. She holds a Magister Artium Diploma from Bielefeld University in Literary Science, Slavistic and East European Studies. Her interests are literature and art. You can see and read more at lifeinspires.blogspot.com. To email Alexandra with feedback write: sylphidine@gmail.com

Flikr’s flickr site.

Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations

[-short short fiction-]

by Indie

The Great War of 2015 left little behind in its wake. No books, no flags, no photographs. Of course there were human survivors - there always are - because even the most thorough of annihilatory practices leaves unexpected havens somewhere, just as a tornado passing through a street levels one house and leaves the next house unscathed. Those crawling out from under the rubble had other concerns than rescuing the trappings of the failed civilization. The occasional preservation of objects reminiscent of the old times, which did however occur, was attributed to a feeling of nostalgia that has always been a part of humanity, the melancholy cousin of the dream for a better day. These objects were placed in a museum in displays without commentary. The photograph of the boy pledging his allegiance was part of a trinity, found in the abandoned ruins of a stone cellar, the owner, perhaps, dust. The photograph had been used as a bookmark in the Bible, the Bible itself wrapped in a flag.

Inde, © 2005 - 2007 all rights reserved

Please see Inde’s other contributions to The PCQ: Hacker Baby, Vicious Pirates

Inde’s blog, The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy, is an experiment in creativity with daily posts of an original one-minute short story inspired by a found photo. All stories are fictional. The idea is based on the Indeterminacy recordings by John Cage, pairing one-minute short stories with random sounds. His daily stories can be found at: indeterminancy.blogspot.com

about the writer:
Inde is an American - originally from Cincinnati, Ohio - living in Europe since the 80’s. He enjoys avant garde, dadaistic, and surrealistic art, literature and music. He has a special love for comedy. Inde holds a masters in psychology and is employed as knowledge engineer, designing natural language dialogue systems. He’s lucky enough to be married to a wonderful muse and has a son 10 years of age. The photograph in this story is of inde as a child.

Published by the permission of the author in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collections

[-short short fiction-]

by Indie

© 2004 - 2007 inde all rights reserved

The vicious pirates Peg Head Jones and his offspring Baby Face Barnacle were terrors from Costa Rica to the Caribbee and as far north as Cincinnati. In ‘98 they jumped the early-morning line at an inland Toys R’ Us, making off with a swag of first edition Barbie dolls just ready to hit the shelves, worth more by this time than the combined income of the top ten supermodels. Their daring escape down the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi on a leaky raft dazzled the media, and their subsequent daylight disappearance into the Gulf was legend. Now they roamed the rain forest path in search of their stash, ears attuned to the myriad patterns of sound indigenous to South Sea islands: the tinkling waterfall, the exotic song of unseen birds, the hushed murmur of natives far off in the distance.

“Matey, be ya sure this were the spot?” Baby Face Barnacle looked up at the taller pirate.

“I’d swear on a keg o’ potato rum!” Peg Head swaggered, rubbing the back of his head with a piece of sandpaper. “I lefts a sign by th’ tree what says ‘Schefflera actinophylla’ and thar it be.” He pointed to the inconspicuous, white marker in front of the tropical trunk.

“But we dug an’ dug’ an’ nuthin’ but a duster it were. I says we’s goin’ ’round in circles. I got more deja vooze than a skippin’ gramophone.” Baby Face shook his head, more puzzled than a parrot in Pittsburg.

“Har, me lad! Somethin’ be wrong, but I’ll be a pied Peter Pan if I kin get me ‘ook in it,” Peg Head answered, and glanced about from side to side, hoping to catch sight of something definitive.

“Ay, we be wanderin’ for hours and ain’t got nowheres. I says we–” The sound of footfalls on the path interrupted Baby Face. He looked up suddenly. “Argh! It be that crazed dog of an islander again. Let’s you an’ me scar him off!”

Baby Face Barnacle put on his mean look and Peg Head Jones snarled, but the approaching native seemed unconcerned. “Look here,” he said, “you two are beginning to frighten the guests. I’ve told you already, no digging, and now you’re making faces at everyone. This is your last warning. Remember that you’re in a conservatory!”

Inde, © 2005 - 2007 all rights reserved

Please see Inde’s other contributions to The PCQ: Hacker Baby, The Great War of 2015

Inde’s blog, The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy, is an experiment in creativity with daily posts of an original one-minute short story inspired by a found photo. All stories are fictional. The idea is based on the Indeterminacy recordings by John Cage, pairing one-minute short stories with random sounds. His daily stories can be found at: indeterminancy.blogspot.com

about the writer:
Inde is an American - originally from Cincinnati, Ohio - living in Europe since the 80’s. He enjoys avant garde, dadaistic, and surrealistic art, literature and music. He has a special love for comedy. Inde holds a masters in psychology and is employed as knowledge engineer, designing natural language dialogue systems. He’s lucky enough to be married to a wonderful muse and has a son 10 years of age.

Published by the permission of the author in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collections

and, just for fun:

[-writing fiction-]

by contributor, Russ Kremer

In Elements of Style we’re warned that unnecessary words are as useless as extra parts on a machine. While food processors come with a multitude of dubious attachments and socket sets contain sizes we mostly lose and never miss, remote controls don’t have buttons that don’t work and the handles and knobs on almost everything else serve some purpose.

Unnecessary words don’t add anything. Consider: he stood on a round circle; she shouted loudly. On a larger scale, unneeded scenes add nothing to a story except the time it takes the reader to wade through them.

That’s why they’re a problem. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them, or that the writing is poor. We should get rid of them because they don’t add to the story but instead, divert attention. They detract. They dilute what’s there, what you need to say, and weaken your attempt to weave a spell.

I’ve developed — but not invented — a process that gives me a clear-cut way to see what scenes should stay and which need to go.

I use index cards, sometimes colored ones if I’m in that sort of mood.

I read through my draft and make a card for each scene, much like a movie-maker might do. Each card lists at the top its place in the story (Chapter Three, scene two), where it occurs (Chester’s apartment), when it takes place, and who’s there. Below that I list each important plot point that is introduced, resolved, or moved along.

For the purposes of this breakdown I consider a “scene” to be any time I’d need to move the “camera” and shoot from a new place. Most of my scenes have two to five plot points (Chester decides to have a party; Theft of Lotty’s laundry; Chester dances with Sheila), so there’s plenty of room. A few times I’ve had to use more than one card, but usually after something is introduced or concluded, my characters want to move anyway, and the story moves to the next place. And, onto the next card.

Once I’ve created my cards I study them, one by one. I ask myself what would be lost without this scene. If I remove the card, what happens to my story?

If, when I remove a card from the stack, the whole story unravels, it has to be left in. If the story holds together just fine without that scene card then I have to admit it isn’t necessary. It isn’t adding anything critical and isn’t doing its part to move the story along. If it isn’t pulling its weight, my story doesn’t need it.

Frequently, the scene includes something which needs to be brought out. It’s important, but does it need to be here? While it’s true that suspense is necessary, many things can be explained immediately after they’re introduced (”Where were you last night?” “With Joe, at his house”) and don’t benefit by being postponed to a later time.

If I would need to make whole-scale changes without a scene, it passes my test of being a working part of the story. If removing it just means I need to mention elsewhere that Ann has a crush on Bill, I can think about where else I could mention that. But, if it doesn’t affect the story at all, I need to either remove it or else use that scene to bring up something the story does need.

My greatest obstacle to removing scenes is my defense that they expose something about the character that’s necessary or interesting. I have to recognize when I’m making that argument and discover if it’s just an excuse. Most things that reveal character can be moved to other, established and necessary scenes. Often, they can be left out entirely. If the author knows the character and how he or she will react, it will permeate the whole story and shouldn’t have to be explicitly stated. If Frank is afraid of spiders, we don’t always need a chapter of backstory to show how that’s come about. Sometimes it’s better just to have him react to spiders once or twice, so the reader gets the idea.

Is this a perfect way to see what to delete? Nope. It’s easy though, and does let me see how the story unfolds. I get a pretty good idea of what adds to the story and what’s simply there, plus I get to use index cards, which I love. And at the end, I know what’s on those index cards and in my story are all necessary things.

© 2005 - 2007 Russ Kremer all rights reserved

Check out another of Russ’s writing articles, What’s Missing?

About the author: Russ lives and writes in LA. He has had several works of short fiction and non-fiction published. He is a yearly participant and winner of NaNoWriMo where he’s well-known by newbies as a guy who knows a lot about writing. He began the “older, but not the official, NaNoEdMo website” - a group for all year ’round editing support, writerly exchanges and feedback which can be found at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nanoedmo/.
Russ’s website: half-dozen.net. Russ’s blog: crenallated flotsam

Originally published in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collecting

[-short short fiction-]

by Indie

Hacker baby was having fun. All he did was press a few buttons and Read the rest of this entry »

[-fiction-]

by Sherry D. Ramsey

Space is dangerous. Accidents happen.

Ektober and I stare at each other through the airlock chamber window. His grey eyes are stony and riveted on mine, blue and equally unyielding. We both appreciate that beyond the airlock death is waiting, cold and dark and lonely.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure.”

Our voices are tinny, disembodied over the airlock’s comm speaker. They hang in the air like ghosts in this ship that already has too many ghosts.

Accidents happen. When Ramirez disappeared, was that the first accident? The first mystery, anyway. How does a contracted mining engineer disappear from an ore hauler moving at .4 lightspeed halfway between the Belt and Paradise Station? There are only three decks, only so many hiding places. Cargo pods brimful of ore. Airlocks that don’t close without someone inside at the controls. Cameras and monitors watching in the light, in the dark, in the times between.

Still, he was gone.

That left four of us, angry and scared. If we had suspicions, we kept them to ourselves. Didn’t speak except to snap at each other. Didn’t ask the right questions. Mistakes, just the first of many.
Accidents happen. Chen, floating outside the ship, EVA with just a tether umbilical, trying to realign the thrusters after the ore mysteriously shifted. Just a stevedore, doing his job. We should all have been at the monitors, might have seen why the last ore pod shifted again and crushed him. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe we would have had an explanation.

“Damn! Not again!”

“What the hell happened?”

“Chen! Is he–”

Three of us now, screaming at each other, then silent. The time we could have sat down and talked about it come and gone and far too late now. More mistakes. We should have stuck together then, stuck like glue, never let each other out of sight. There might still be three of us, instead of just Ektober and me, standing on opposite sides of the airlock door with a single flux laser between us.

Accidents. Glazer hiding out on C deck with just his drives for company–was it only four days ago? Then the ship going suddenly quiet, drives offline. Ektober and I seemed to get there at the same time. The horrible burns on Glazer’s suit and through his chest might have been from the plasma injector leak. Or maybe, just maybe, flux laser burns. I’m not a doctor nor a cop, and neither is Ektober. Charred, burnt flesh is a fact but not necessarily an explanation. How could either of us be sure? But there were flux lasers in the weapons locker, we all knew that. There’s one less now.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you? Just like you killed the others.”

“I haven’t killed anyone–yet.”

“And yet they’re dead.”

Space is dangerous. Ektober patched up the plasma leak while I watched. He didn’t turn his back to me, even for a second. It might keep working long enough to get home. The ore hauler runs raggedly without Glazer to tend the drives. She’s not an old ship, but she wheezes through space like a run-down antique, the ore heavy in her belly. The stresses shake us both around inside like vultures eyeing the same piece of carrion.>br/>

Two of us left, not speaking then, barely speaking now, just watching. Captain and navigator. Either one of us could make it alone, run the ship and maybe make station. Got to be careful. Accidents happen. Ektober’s eyes are on me all the time, even when he’s not in the same part of the ship. I can feel them. He knows I’m watching him, too. Oh, he knows. Dangerous. Air, water, food, life; it’s all here in this tin can of a ship and outside only hot stars and cold death. Leaks, malfunctions, poisons, murder; death sometimes comes inside, too, no less cold for a thin shroud of metal and plastic embracing it.

“It was you, all along.”

“You think I–no, you’re just saying that. It was you.”

“What are you going to do?”

Silence.

The EVA suits hang limp against the steel wall like a row of hanged men, mute guardians against what waits outside the airlock. Ektober and I can both see them. They’re all empty, just like the engine room where Glazer tended the drives like they were his children. Just like the cabin where Chen slept, dreaming of home after a long ore run. Just like Ramirez’ chair at the geology console, worn soft by long hours plotting ore deposits and calculating capacities. Empty like the bridge, empty like the trust that hollows out quick when a crew all alone in space starts dying.

So it comes down to this. Ektober and I, watching each other, one on each side of the airlock door. Both thinking the same thing, I’m sure–only one of us will be alive on the hauler when she grinds her way into the spacedock. Only one to claim the salvage. Only one to sell the ore. A rich haul. If she makes it that far. But was it worth murder?

“Just tell me one thing.”

“Don’t try to talk me out of this!”

“Are you killing me because you killed the rest of them, or because you think I did it?”

Ektober can’t see my hands, but he knows I’m still holding the flux laser with one. The flux laser I used to force him into the airlock chamber. He can’t see how it’s shaking. I imagine my voice, still ghostly even if I make it to Paradise Station, explaining why I did what I’m about to do. “I just couldn’t stand it any more. I was too frightened. It must have been him…”

Must have? Is that good enough? Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe I’d be safe enough if I just left him where he is until we make the station…

“No! You–it must have been you. There’s no-one else.”

“I didn’t kill anyone. And I don’t think you did, Risa, I really don’t.”

“Then who?”

“There must be an explanation. We could find it together…”

What is he saying? He’s trying to confuse me. Or help me. I don’t want to be left here alone. Maybe I should believe him…
…and maybe not. He knows when he sees me move that I’m going to push the airlock button. My face is wet but I don’t remember when I started crying. I don’t think I have a choice. I have to save myself.

Then suddenly Ektober shouts, a name–but it’s not my name–

And something hits me, hard. I’m shoved against the airlock door, my forehead banging hard against the window. I see Ektober’s eyes, wide with horror and disbelief, looking through the wire-gridded window past me.

I slide down the door, leaving a thin smear of bright red blood along the silvery metal. A voice behind me shouts, “Too long, girl, you’re taking too long! Push it! Just push the damn button!”

Ramirez, dead Ramirez, is reaching down and pulling the flux laser out of my hands. But he’s not dead. No, he’s here, here trying to kill off the last of us. He looks like something dead, covered with dust and dirt from the ore. Somehow he’s been hiding in the ore. Of course. He did the calculations. He supervised the pod loads. But he wants it all–ore, salvage, everything. His mad eyes blaze like supernovas against the black depth of space.

He grabs my wrist but someone kicks him in the stomach and he loosens his hold, bent double and gasping. I realize it was me and kick again.

I’ve still got the flux laser but it’s twisted in my hand. I try to bring it around, aim it at Ramirez but he kicks back. Pain blooms in my side and the air rushes out of my lungs like I’m the one going out the airlock.

The airlock! Ektober is pounding on the inside of the door. The sound booms around us like footsteps in an empty ore pod. Ramirez is wrestling at the flux laser but my finger is on the trigger and I pull it. I don’t know where it’s pointing, it could be straight at my heart but I pull and pull. White fire sears up past Ramirez’ head and he screams, but he doesn’t let go of me.

“Risa!”

Ektober is yelling my name like he thinks I’ve forgotten he’s in there. Ramirez is babbling, swearing. I can’t make out what he’s saying but it’s punctuated by gasps and groans and I realize I’m kicking him again, pushing him back. Hot spittle hits my face and I manage to twist free.

His hand slips off the laser as he staggers backward, and I point and fire again. I hit him–I think–the ore dust ignites and Ramirez flares like a torch and falls against the wall, screaming and striking one of the airlock buttons that I was so close to pushing only–can it be?–seconds ago. But which one?

When the inner door slides open and Ektober bursts out it’s like we’ve hit a time clip and everything’s speeded up. One heartbeat, Ektober grabs Ramirez, still flaming and howling; two beats, he pushes Ramirez into the airlock and slams the button to close the door; three beats and he jabs the other button, ending the screams as Ramirez bursts out into space, into the waiting arms of cold, lonely death. Out with the other ghosts.

Silence. Time slows, returns to normal, my heart keeping pace. Ektober walks over and slumps on the floor beside me, pats me on the arm. He’s breathing hard and not trying to hide it. Five minutes ago I was ready to kill him. Now we’re friends again.

“Why didn’t he wait?” I say finally. “I was going to push the button. If he’d waited I would have killed you and he could have killed me whenever he wanted.”

“He was crazy. Or maybe he thought I was talking you out of it.” Ektober looks at me, his grey eyes unreadable. “Was I?”

I feel a strange tug on my face, something I don’t recognize for a split second. A smile. I shake my head. “No. You were dead. That bastard saved your life.”

Ektober throws a mock salute at the empty airlock and gets to his feet. “Let’s try and get this rig home,” he says. “I need a good long rest. Space is dangerous.”

I let him help me up, wincing at the pain in my side. “Yeah,” I say, “dangerous.”

He walks away, and I pick up the flux laser and stick it through my belt. You never know. It’s a lot of ore. Like they say, accidents happen.

THE END

© 2004 - 2007 sherry d. ramsey; all rights reserved

about the author:
Sherry writes speculative fiction. She’s published many short stories and poems and her unpublished SF novel, “One’s Aspect to the Sun” was recently awarded second place in the 28th Annual Atlantic Writing Competition’s novel category, the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize. Accidents Happen was originally published online in the July 2004 issue of The Martian Wave. Sherry is also the author of many essays and articles especially on the craft of writing. She is the publisher and editor of the highly successful Scriptorium Webzine for Writers. You can read all about Sherry at her author’s website sherrydramsey.com.

Be sure to read Sherry’s other works in The PCQ.
article - gardening;
poetry
- I, Galaxy

- UPLOAD

Photo credits: all photos courtesy of NASA and The Hubble; click on any of the photos to find out more about each one or see the Hubble Site.

Happy 15th Anniversary to the Hubble!

Published by the permission of the author in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces

[-writing fiction -]

Are your stories missing the mark?
This article may help you to understand what isn’t there that needs to be.

by contributor, Russ Kremer

Many of the stories we read, including most of the good ones, follow a fairly simple formula, one that’s easy to learn — but difficult to master! We see it so often we don’t always recognize it, but many otherwise fine stories suffer by ignoring it. All we need to do is introduce a character with a goal, or some event that needs resolution. Then, build up the suspense to the climax, which is when the goal is met or avoided, or the event takes place or not. As simple as this is, executing it is another matter entirely.

The most frequently missed element is conflict. Ideally, the main character should be in conflict on every page, and the reader needs to feel it. This doesn’t mean we all have to write action thrillers. Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird all use this formula. What they avoid - and what is common in early drafts - is passivity, characters waiting around not doing anything.

It’s almost impossible to get to the conflict too quickly.

I notice in my own writing that too often it takes me several unnecessary chapters, or in the case of a short story, paragraphs, to warm up and get to the point. The reader has nothing invested in the characters or the world I’m describing when she picks up my story, and the first thing I need to do is capture her interest. I spend far too long on set-up, and the backstory of someone the reader doesn’t care about yet is boring.

When I look over my first drafts I see long stretches where nothing happens. Oh, sure, I’m describing things, but most of them have nothing to do with the character’s journey, or with resolving the dilemma I should have introduced in the beginning. It should be easy to start off by saying Ann wants to move, that Bill wants to marry Sue, that a peaceful town is threatened with fire, then write the story where we follow along and see what happens. But it isn’t as easy as it seems.

If someone in your story has a secret, and she’s asked “What’s new?” there’s tension and conflict. Will she reveal her secret or won’t she? If she has no secret and is asked the same question, there’s little to engage the reader, nothing at stake. When there’s nothing at stake, nothing that depends on the outcome, the “What’s new?” question should be removed. Nothing is answered, nothing is revealed, nothing is added.

Writers love words, descriptions, their characters. Readers have no such immediate reactions, but they want them. They want to love or hate your characters, but they need a reason. They want to see them in action, doing things, making decisions, taking the initiative. It is not always enjoyable to read about someone waiting for something to happen, for something to respond to. Sure, that’s a big part of life, but it rarely translates to a good story.

Just as bad, is when the conflict is introduced, but then ignored. We did not hear anything about Juliet’s shopping excursions before her dates with Romeo (although I’d imagine she and he both were concerned about their appearance). It may have been interesting, may have contained some great descriptions, but it wouldn’t have added anything necessary to the story. It would not have advanced the plot, and that’s another common error. If a scene can be removed without having to re-write huge chunks of the story, it isn’t necessary.

Readers are being asked to spend their precious spare time in the world we’ve created. If dawdle along, refusing to get to and stick to the point, they’ll spend their time elsewhere. If, however, the beginning is gripping, the characters are growing, the plot is advancing, they just might keep reading to see what happens next or even, how the conflict is finally resolved.

© 2005 - 2007 Russ Kremer all rights reserved

Check out another of Russ’s writing articles, Necessary Things.

About the author: Russ lives and writes in LA. He has had several works of short fiction and non-fiction published. He is a yearly participant and winner of NaNoWriMo where he’s well-known by newbies as a guy who knows a lot about writing. He began the “older, but not the official, NaNoEdMo website” - a group for all year ’round editing support, writerly exchanges and feedback which can be found at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nanoedmo/. His website: half-dozen.net. His blog: crenallated flotsam

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces

[-short fiction-]

The Dowsing
by Julie A. Serroul

Mindy blinked tears from her wincing eyes.

She trudged behind Tony, trying to focus on his boots instead of the snow which glinted the bright sunlight back at her in a thousand blinding crystals. The snow wouldn’t last long in this sun anyway, it was March and there were patches of shriveled, brown grass and crusty clumps of earth showing in the field behind them.

When they entered the musty blackness of the old barn, she paused until her watery eyes adjusted. After a moment she could see clearly. It wasn’t that dark. Numerous cracks and gaping holes in the walls and roof let in a fair amount of dust-laden sunlight. The ceiling sagged under a blanket of snow, shedding melting droplets that rained down upon them through the rotting boards.

“You grab the shovels, picks and stuff over in that corner, and I’ll start with the buckets of nails and things,” Tony ordered, poking a gloved finger toward the corner he meant.

Mindy grit her teeth, moving toward the rusting equipment. This was Tony’s uncle’s farm, so he had the right to boss her around. Trouble was, lately he’d started bossing her around at school as well.

They moved back out into the sunshine and toward the cart attached to their four-wheeler. Mindy could see her boss, Mr. McInnes, dismounting his own four-wheeler. Shading his eyes, he stared back toward the distant orchard’s treeline. His wife, Freda, remained on the rig, arms crossed.

Their son, Thomas, squirmed on her lap. The four year old wasted no time climbing down from his mother’s legs onto the hardened mud. He ran to the nearest pile of snow, digging in with eager mittens. Mindy dumped her armload into the cart, arranging the contents for space efficiency as Tony returned for another load. Before joining him, she mimicked Mr. McInnes’ pose.

Emerging from the orchard was a horse and rider. No? two riders. Mindy picked out a tiny, wriggling figure in front of the larger one.

By the time she was dumping and arranging her second armload, she could see the rider was Jim MacLeod, his wrinkled, light-brown face and sharp nose showing beneath his decrepit cowboy hat.

She raised a hand into the air and he nodded in her direction. The little wriggling figure was Brittany McInnes. Mindy smirked. Brittany was the McInnes’ other child and the little scamp never missed an opportunity to con easy-going, old Jim for a ride on his horse, Salty.

Mindy noticed Freda lean toward her husband for a brief exchange in a lowered tone. When he didn’t respond to something she said, Freda raised her voice just enough for Mindy to make out the angry hiss. “My own feelings on the matter, don’t count one bit, I guess!”

Mindy’s eavesdropping talents couldn’t overcome the racket of Tony dumping an armload of junk into the cart, so she missed Mr. McInnes’ reply. He strode toward the approaching horse and away from his wife, who stood, fists clenched at her sides.

“Do ya think you could hurry it up there, speedy,” Tony drawled down at her, “we’ve got to get this rathole emptied by tonight if you remember, so they can tear it down in the morning.” He winked as he strode toward the barn. “Unless you’re trying to keep me out here alone with you after dark.”

That sent her scurrying after him, cheeks pinker than the crisp March air could explain.

By the time they’d finished digging out everything worth salvaging, Freda was approaching with a length of rope and Thomas in her arms.

Brittany skipped along behind them. She screamed in delight when she saw her cousin, Tony. She pushed past her mother’s legs and barreled into him to bear hug his thighs. “Tony!”

“Oof!” Tony wind-milled his arms to keep his balance. “Hey there, little cuz!”

Mindy smiled at the usually affable Freda, but the woman’s expression was cool as she handed Mindy the rope.

Thomas wrestled to escape his mother’s grasp reaching for Tony as well.

“Tie down that stuff securely before you head out, please.”

“Uh, sure Freda, no problem.”

Tony gave Mindy a knowing look as she handed him one end of the rope. Together they worked to lash down the contents of the cart, grateful for Brittany’s babbling stories which erased the uncomfortable silence.

Freda shifted from foot to foot, eyebrows knotted as she watched her husband deep in conversation with Jim, as they walked the perimeter of the field.

Sighing, she interrupted Brittany’s chatter, “Brittany, honey, leave the kids alone to do their work. Why don’t you take Thomas and play in the snow for a minute, then you and Mommy can go back to the house and make our cookies, okay?”

“Cookies! Yeah, okay Mommy!” Brittany ran off to the large pile of snow lying in the cool shadow cast by the barn.

Thomas pumped his little legs to keep up. “I wanna cookie too, Brittany, ‘kay?”

As Tony worked on tightening the knots, Mindy saw Jim approach his horse, pulling a large, rectangular box from the saddlebag.

This drew an angry huff from Freda.

Curiosity overpowered Mindy’s common sense and she asked, “What are they doing, Freda?”

“The devil’s work,” she whispered harshly, her eyes boring into Jim’s narrow back as he returned to the field’s edge. Shaking her head, one hand over her mouth, she marched back toward her own four-wheeler. Mindy turned wide eyes to Tony. “What’s going on?”

Tony’s expression was serious, for once. “Uncle Phil wants to work this end of the farm, but he needs a good water source way out here.” He lowered his head as he flipped open his knife, leaning to cut the excess rope.

“So? I still don’t get it.”

“Drilling for wells blindly can cost a lot of money … maybe all for nothing. He doesn’t want to take on the expense unless he knows there’s a good water source.”

Mindy watched as Jim withdrew two L-shaped lengths of what looked like wire, held them at a squared angle to his body a couple of feet ahead of himself, then moved in slow deliberate steps.

“What’s he doing?”

“Water witching.” Mindy turned to see if Tony was teasing her, but he stood coiling up the unused rope, looking perfectly serious.

Tony met her incredulous look with a shrug. “Father McDonnell talks about how water witching, or dowsing, is based on witch craft. That it’s unnatural, against God. You know Aunt Freda’s a religious woman.”

“I see your uncle in church every week with her… maybe it‘s just a talent, a gift from God, instead of the work of the devil. What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I guess it comes from whoever has domain over bull-shit and fools.” He chuckled at his own comment as Mindy rolled her eyes. Why she even asked his opinion she couldn’t guess.

Tony was starting up the four-wheeler. “Well, we’re done. We can head back.”

Mindy looked on in amazement at Jim pacing the field, the wire ends wiggling slightly back and forth as he moved.

When Mindy didn’t join him Tony sighed and climbed out of the rig, leaving it running. He returned to her side.

They stared as Jim worked the field, Phil McInnes hovering behind him, a couple of painted stakes clutched in his big fist.

Suddenly, the wire tips jerked toward each other, bobbed apart, then thrust back to touch once again. Jim stopped and pointed to the exposed earth in front of him. Phil nodded and stepped forward to stake off the area he indicated. Jim continued in a straight line from the spot being staked. Mindy raised her eyebrows at Tony, but he looked unimpressed. “How’s it suppose to work?”

Tony smirked at her, “I don’t know, smarty. You’re the one headed to college for a science degree, you figure it out.”

Brittany’s scream froze Mindy’s heart in her chest. It pounded back to life as she and Tony turned horrified eyes to see the little girl in the driver’s seat of their four-wheeler as it rumbled backward toward the dilapidated barn.

Tony bolted after it, managing to clutch Brittany by the front of her jacket and haul her off the rig just before the cart slammed into the front of the barn. Debris spurted from the upper level of the barn to shower down on the cart and four-wheeler. Tony covered Brittany with his body. They all heard a rumbling roar as a mini-avalanche slid from the peaked barn roof to pound onto the ground below. It landed right on the spot where the kids had been playing in the snow.

Mindy moaned in fear. Where was Thomas? Running toward the side of the barn, Freda came screaming behind her, “Thomas! Thomas!”

They reached the side of the structure together to see nothing but huge mounds of snow.

“Where is he? Where is he? Thomas!” Freda clawed at the snow, screaming for her son.

Tony came around the corner carrying a sobbing Brittany.

Phil and Jim were sprinting toward them. “What happened?” But Phil said nothing further when he saw his wife raking at the mound of snow. He fell to his own knees to help her.

They all dug, calling the boy’s name.

Phil grabbed Tony’s arm. “Take my rig and go back to the house for Ruff! He’ll find the baby if we don’t.” Their farm dog, Ruff, was a bloodhound.

Tony ran to do as he was asked, but Jim yelled, “Take Salty!”

Tony changed course, mounting the gray and white mare. He galloped off in the direction of the homestead.

Mindy eyes filled as she dug. Tony would never make it in time.

“Move!”

All digging stopped. Jim stood, wires in his hands, at one end of the snowfall. Mounting cautiously, he moved across the mound, dowsing as he went.

Mindy and Phil rose, but Freda stayed on her knees, hands clasped in front of her, praying fervently.

Little Brittany, sitting forgotten in a nearby pile of snow, stopped crying and stared at Jim. All was silent, save the crunch of Jim’s boots on the snow and the hushed whisper of Freda’s prayer.

Four feet from where they had been digging the wire’s bobbed slightly toward each other, the movement barely perceptible.

Jim froze. “Here!”

He tossed his wires aside, scooping arm-loads of snow away from the spot.

They all burrowed desperately for a minute or so, until two little, brown boots were revealed.

Phil grabbed his son’s ankles, yanking him from the loosely packed snow. A large, red welt lined his forehead and his eyes were closed, but Thomas was breathing.

“Thank you God, thank you God!” Freda rocked her son against her chest as her husband ran for the four-wheeler.

Phil stopped the rig and Jim slid a quietly sobbing Brittany inside.

As Freda clambered to get on, she paused to look into Jim MacLeod’s eyes for the first time that day. “Thank you,” she whispered as her husband roared them away.

When they approached the treeline, Tony emerged, Ruff bolting along behind him. He pulled the reins to make the horse follow the four-wheeler, Ruff twisting to follow as if tethered. All members of the McInnes family disappeared into the orchard.

Mindy began to cry with relief, staring at her reddened, swollen finger tips. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

Jim nodded as he bent to pick up his dowsing wires. “Little ones are tougher than they look.”

Mindy followed him as he walked back over to his gear, crouching to place the wires back inside the case.

Mindy crouched with him. “How does it work?”

Jim shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“Don’t much care to know. All I know is it works.” His dark brown eyes met her own, “Don’t think it’s devil’s work, like some.” His smile stopped short of his eyes.

Mindy squirmed. “It can’t be evil,” she said, grabbing his coat, “look what you did.”

He nodded, looking back toward the ravaged snow pile. When he turned his smile did warm his eyes.

They walked back toward the remaining rig, Mindy deep in thought.

“Electromagnetic fields, maybe.”

Jim just smiled.

“It could be that. Really.” she said.

Jim’s smile faded and he halted abruptly. “Doesn’t matter to me. I can do it, so I do. Just like the minister can reach people, so he does. Mrs. Johnstone can paint beautiful portraits, so she does. Jenny Fisher can sing like the angels, so she’s gone off to the big city to do just that.”

Jim started walking again. “I’ll leave figuring out why to you scientific types.”

Mindy rolled her eyes. Small towns.

She hollered at Jim’s back, “Will you show me how?”

“Yeah, I’ll show you,” he hesitated, “but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it.”

Mindy grinned. There was a scientific explanation for it, she was sure. It was more logical than someone as kind-natured as old Jim doing anything evil.

She jogged to join him at the four-wheeler.

THE END

© 2003- 2007 by Julie A. Serroul, all rights reserved

about the author:
Julie is an associate editor at The Scriptorium Webzine for Writers. She writes speculative fiction and is currently at work on her first novel-length fiction. Look for her articles in The Scriptorium.

Orginally published in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: inspiration

[-exercise, writing-]

If you’re having trouble getting started in fiction or need a helpful exercise, try this:

ONE TRUE MEMORY/TWO LIES

• Choose one real childhood memory.
• Make up a lie that relates to that true incident.
• If you think of them as lies instead of ‘using your imagination’ it won’t throw you into a creative crisis of confidence.
  Lie innocently … as a child might.
• Then make up one more lie, this one more brazen. Have fun with it!
• Write for 20 - 30 minutes about these three and see what happens. Try this every day for a week without looking back at what you’ve written. Next week you can evaluate if you have anything that you’d like to expand upon but as a beginning, keep it in the realm of - you guessed it - practice

.

TRIGGERS

Is your MIND BLANK? Suddenly you can’t think of anything that happened to you in your childhood?
Here are some triggers:

• * source of heat
• * what we ate on Sundays
• * report cards/grades

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces