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Here is an idea for a short story that has been going around in my head for a while. I'm perhaps a little less than halfway through the first draft. Truth be told, it's not turning out exactly like my initial thought, and there not as much action and plot as I hoped. That said, just trying to see if I'm off to the right start... ------------------------------------ I stared at the map for hours. Plastic thumbtacks designated the position of each sighting. Their colors revealed the timeframe. A puzzle. A confounding puzzle. And then the pattern hit me, like Molly did before she left.
The most recent sightings formed an expanding semicircle. By extrapolating backwards, I pinpointed a remote area along the Pacific coast. It seemed like a sudden exodus, which occurred four weeks previous, around the 4th of June.
I swiveled my chair to face the computer screen. In a few minutes, the information superhighway yielded a clue, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake. The epicenter occurred— in the exact area I had pinpointed. I grabbed the phone and dialed Molly’s cell number.
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Given the setup you describe, this shouldn't be something it takes him hours or even minutes staring at the map to figure out. In fact, the pattern you suggest should have been obvious even before he plotted the information on a map, since the sightings would be getting further apart all the time.
That was my main problem. I'm seeing a map with colored pins arranged by color in concentric arcs...it doesn't take me hours or even enough datapoints to make arcs before I figure it out. And then you drop the bomb that there was a 7.2 quake at that location, that should have definitely made the news, even if the location was remote, particularly if it was on the coast (okay, it did make the news, but he shouldn't have needed to look it up).
I have to ditto the "like Molly did before she left" criticism. Maybe you could reword it, change Molly's name or something. But it wasn't such a big deal. The notion that
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I like it. I'll echo the Molly comments, and have one of my own: I didn't care for the term "information superhighway." Just the Internet will do.
Posts: 284 | Registered: Sep 2004
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"like Molly did before she left" I 2nd, (or 5th by now as the case may be) the comments on, in the sense that it's a bit unclear and took me out. But - I also found it comical; if you were going for funny or a lighter tone maybe you could rework it in some other way. If not...er, oops.
I also didn't care for "information superhighway". *flees from memories of cheesy political speeches*
Knowing what the character was researching right from the start would have drawn me in more and added more clarity, even if it wasn't spelled out, but just alluded to. Sightings and a sudden exodus of what? (I assume 'to where' gets answered later.) A group of monsters? Aliens? An earthquakeophobic serial killer on the loose? The title gives a clue, but I would want that fairly crucial piece of info quickly.
The first paragraph read a bit fragmented to me. Maybe you could try combining the 2nd and 3rd sentences?
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I liked the Molly line. But then, I really like those really cliche, detective story lines--"I've got three slugs in my gut, one is lead and the other two are bourbon," and all that good stuff. I think the Molly line had a similar feel to those cliche detective stories. I don't know if you think that's a good thing or not, but I like it.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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