In September of 2007, I started this blog
with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how
little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014,
I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things
I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories.
I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off
of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write.
Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing
output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to
carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your
comments are welcome!
ANALOG Tag Line: A living road which has partially eaten a murder
victim, a bunch of suspects, and a detective who can read the roadway lead to
the person who had “last contact”.
Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?) I was working
in the world I’ve created in which the federal government has mandated the
abandonment of the Wild and is deconstructing everything outside of the major
cities. One to ten million people are moved into massive some 10,000 structures
called Vertical Villages which are built from deconstructed towns and cities by
DEconstruction And Recovery Robots – DEARRS or dearrs and a maglev system that
constantly funnels the construction debris into the VV system. I’ve written a
couple of published stories in this world, “Invoking Fire”, “Oath”, “Technopred”,
and most recently, “Carpe Hnub” all take place in this future. It also includes
a concept that is playing out in real life – the adaptation wildlife is making
to technology – and how that might lead to intelligences other than Human in
the long run. If you’re interested, the story is here: http://aurorawolf.com/2013/05/guy-stewart/ . At the end is a
link to a National Geographic special called “Raccoon Nation”. Fascinating
stuff.
Opening Line: “Be Nho Elf let the car float to a
stop and settle, then popped the door, swinging her short legs out into the
muggy Minnesota heat.”
Onward: Not a bad opening, and I even start out with
a corpse, which is, I am led to believe, what EVERY murder mystery is supposed
to do.
However, from there
it slides downhill slowly into technobabble: “Tykaetrice signaled “Corporal Stager
Ma’am” who came over and sprayed the corpse with an old-fashioned pump sprayer.
The solution would send the road organism – a bioengineered DNA patchwork of
cellulose, heme, eel, ameba, peat moss, alfalfa, leukocytes, iron and a mix of Notothenioidei and Noctilucan cells, more commonly known by its acronym CHEAPALIN – around
the body into hibernation. The entire network of asphalt roads in North America had been converted into sets of living
organisms. Modified electric eel cells created current passing through
hair-fine iron filaments in the road. A thick black pad of organic road
organism attached to the underside of any car with a bioconversion, charged a
set of batteries. A magnetic field generated as cars moved over the filaments
got read by a microchip implanted in the car’s pad, matching the road’s
magnetic field creating a maglev effect. A variety of chlorophyll and alfalfa
genes allowed roots growing under the road organism to return nitrogen to the
soil, pull up micronutrients and conduct photosynthesis. A semi-transparent,
thick cellulose skin protected the whole thing while remaining flexible. A few Notothenioidei genes kept cellular
fluids from freezing during Minnesota
winters. Noctilucan genes made it
glow at night when disturbed. Leukocytes digested roadkill, leaves, branches
and old pizza boxes.”
There’s nothing
gripping – not even for me and I was the one who wrote it. I KNOW I got lost in
the science of the thing and just tacked on the murder part to show off my
biology expertise…
What Was I Trying
To Say? I guess I was trying
to say that the future is going to be different in ways we can’t even conceive.
The Rest of the
Story: Amazingly, the story
DOES pick up and even reading something I wrote myself, I was puzzled enough
that I couldn’t figure out who the real murderer was. The biggest problem is
that I ended the story – and I STILL don’t know who killed. On page 22-24,
which is really supposed to be the dénouement, it’s not even clear to ME who
the bad guy was! I THINK the brother did it but sent the boyfriend to the
teacher’s house to scare them all be threatening to pin the murder on him…
End Analysis: The story’s interesting (for me) because of
the science. As it was written in 2011 and COULD have followed a storyline like
the TV series BONES, I hadn’t graduated into really know what I was doing. I’d
gotten plenty of things published, but I also hadn’t read many mysteries. I’ve
done so now – mostly BONES and LONGMIRE and William Kent Krueger’s CORK O’CONNOR
books, so I think I might be better at writing in the mystery genre.
Can This Story Be
Saved? I think there’s a
really good chance I could save it. I need to read more SHORT mystery fiction though.
I’ve got the basics of long-fiction, I think (I DID writing a SF novel, OUT OF
THE DEBTOR STARS that I’m shopping around, that is basically an alien murder
mystery…) Besides, I only tried four markets then gave up…I need to be more
persistent with that!
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