An alien tapped me on the shoulder.
“Pardon me,” it said, “but you’re a science fiction writer, correct?”
I swiveled in my chair to face it, leaving the next sentence of my novel half-typed. I finished a drag on my cigarette, and exhaled in the alien’s face.
“Yup,” I said. “Didn’t I just write about you? What are you doing off the page?”
Waving a tendril to clear away the smoke, it nodded. “Yes. I believe you described me as ‘having a body like that of a praying mantis stuck on spider legs, with stunted, ribbed wings and a triangular head spotted with more than three dozen lenses that might’ve been eyes…’”
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited July 31, 2007).]
It was what I imagine I would do if one of my characters just appeared.
I could read more, though there was no distinct hook.
I like the dialog and pace. My gut reaction (and I suppose the first 13 is an appeal to gut reactions) is that similar ideas have been done a few times and that you'll need a touch more information about what will happen between the Writer and the Written to overcome this reaction.
--WouldBe
That's an interesting self-referent point of view. You are ... err ... the writer is pretty gutsy blowing smoke in the face of such a creature. After creature feeds back your description, my imagination continues with
*GULP*
as the creature truncates your body at the neck and truncates this story to a flash fiction.
Seriously, the whole thing has me hooked. Are you looking for readers?
This could be amusing, but it's metafiction, not fiction, and thus not really my sort of thing. You'd need to submit it to a market that does this sort of thing, I think, and I'm not sure which markets do that.
If you're interested in feedback but not in a hurry, I'd be willing to tell you what I think about the whole thing. (When you post to F&F, it would help us understand what you wanted if you said so up front: "This is science metafiction, 1200 words, looking for readers" or what have you.)
And welcome to Hatrack.
Regards,
Oliver
Anyways, I'll send it around to those who want a look at the whole bit. It's not long..just over 2k.
Jidin has a gimmick: the alien is the actualization of the author's imagination.
Jidin also has a hook. Unfortunately, it's on the second page of the manuscript.
Lesson I take away from it: if possible, make sure the hook gets onto the first page, and avoid letting the gimmick -- no matter how cool -- get in the way of that goal.