Here's a proposed challenge for any of us who want to get some more insight into moment-to-moment writing decisions:

Every week by 9PM EST Thursday of each week, anyone who wants to participate for the week writes the next bit of the story (in the first week, it would be a story opening). This next bit could be only a few dozen words, or as much as a thousand words.

All of the proposed next bits are e-mailed to me or entered into a special Web site, and are posted Thursday night or Friday morning. From then until 9PM EST Sunday, anyone who wants to can rate each of the new bits with a 1-10 (10 is highest) rating in terms of how effectively it carries on the story, and makes comments about what made it more or less successful. The rating is only about how well it continues the story, not how well written it is in general -- although I imagine these will often go together.

Then the piece with the highest total score becomes the next bit of the story, and the following week we write proposed bits to follow that. The "winning" bit remains anonymous, so that the focus remains on the writing decisions and not on the "winner." If the winning bit states it's intended to be the end of the story, the story ends (and if we want, we start another). At that point we could decide to post who wrote which bit if we want.

We could carry this on in special threads here at Hatrack if that's OK, or I could set up a special Web site for doing it.

The point of the exercise is to see the diverse ways in which various of us will approach continuing the same story: Seeing what the options were, and what the consequences are of following one option or another. If one writer adds a piece that shores up the basic decency of the protagonist while another shows a despicable flaw, which do we find more satisfying? How much does that depend on context? How important is maintaining a consistent writing style? etc.

I'd be curious whether anyone would be interested in trying this; of course I'm game. Let me know by Sunday evening? Of course you could decide to participate or not for each week as we went forward.

If we came up with something we really liked, we might try submitting it for publication somewhere; if it were accepted, we'd have to decide what to do with the proceeds as a group.

I agree that the logistics are hard to communicate beforehand. The first week I'll post "now it's time to do this - now it's time to do that," and after that I think it will be easy.

This should be fun. :)

TTFN & lol

We may have a special area on Hatrack set up soon, but in the mean time we can conduct the Writing Decisions Challenge right here.

Anyone who'd like to participate for this week writes the first little bit of a story -- not even a full scene, unless it's quite a short one.

(You can participate in just the weeks you want to: you don't have to participate every week.)

Your opening can be anything from about thirty words to 1,000 words, but we're shooting for something in the neighborhood of 100-200 words. Don't worry about finishing the scene or stopping at a logical stopping place: Instead, break it off anywhere that works for you.

The goal is to start a story that is engaging to the reader and that makes her/him avid to read what happens next. You don't have to know how the story goes from your opening, and in fact it's probably better not to know, since other people will be writing some of it if your piece is the one we continue with.

I think some kind of speculative fiction genre will be best for us here, since so many of us are interested in F/SF, but it doesn't have to be speculative: your piece can be written in any genre (or no genre), any style, any voice. You don't even have to know what the genre is before you start.

PLEASE DON'T POST YOUR OPENINGS HERE. Instead, e-mail them to me at luc@meadowdance.org, from any e-mail address, by Thursday at 9PM EST. Please use the subject line "Writing Decisions." I'll collect all the openings and post them, anonymously and in random order, for people to rate. I'll describe rating in detail when I post the openings.

OK, let's go write some openings!

================================================

#1
It was one of those completely quiet nights in the mountains. The kind of quiet that even the crickets seemed reluctant to disturb. That's why Jason Fine was so surprised when he glanced out the window and saw the spaceship sitting in his backyard.

"When the hell did that get here?" he mused.

================================================

#2
"Whoa, whoa, don’t lift off yet!"

"The door has closed," said the Sabirul, and as if that settled it, she twisted her long, white body under an archway and headed toward the interior of the ship.

"Hey!" Carrie yelled. "Hey!" She grabbed one of the Sabirul’s back legs and pulled. It was tall, of course, but the Sabirul had evolved under lighter gravity and they were spindly; easy to drag. "Aren’t you guys going to take off? I’m not one of your crew members, in case you haven’t noticed."

"The Code of the Sabirul does not permit the door to be opened once it has been closed. There are customs and procedural conflicts," it said, all the while pulling its leg to try to get free.

"I thought humans weren’t permitted to stay on your ships," Carrie said desperately. What was wrong with this thing? Was it mentally deficient?

The Sabirul finally managed to wrestle free and galloped away.

"They’re not, but there is nothing I can do," it called back. Then it bent its gummy body to get around a nose-shaped projection in the corridor and was gone.

Carrie reflected that two wrongs would have made a perfectly good right in this case. She snatched up her VR kit and set off after it, hoping to find someone who would have some kind of sense. There was no chance they would take her off into space with them; humans had been trying to hitch rides ever since the Sabirul appeared out of the night sky eighteen years before. Specialists like Carrie -- she was a computer reality troubleshooter -- could enter the ships on the ground; even curiosity seekers sometimes could. But no one was allowed to stay until lift-off.

===============================================
#3

The leaves were falling like rain that morning, hard and fast. Jacob was in one of those moods were being pelted with dead leaves, and occasionally having them slip between his shirt and coat, was a wonderful thing. He didn't know why he was in this mood or where it had come from, nor did he really want to know. Jacob knew from experience that the best thing to do with these moods was to surrender to them the way that mother he had just passed had surrendered to the loud demands for sweets from her two cute kids. Jacob paused for a moment, looked up at the clouds obscuring the dim Autumn sun and smiled.

================================================

#4

"This isn’t what I asked for."

"Yes it is." Eldon’s beard was beginning to itch like it did when he became angry. He’d spent so much work making the program exactly what Mr. Thewood wanted that he didn’t have the patience to deal with a man who had no idea what he wanted in the first place.

"I didn’t ask for sentience."

"There is no other way to accomplish everything you demanded when you gave me the project." He put no emphasis on the word ‘demanded’ but the stress was there all the same. Mr. Thewood had said he wouldn’t buy the program unless it did everything he wanted it to do. The program was a good one.

"I will not have a computer program going crazy on my customers!"

Now, that just made Eldon plain mad. He was the best programmer he’d ever met, and chances were, the best in the world. Not the most renowned, but really good nonetheless. Eldon had made sure the program was imbedded with ethics to make a nun feel smothered.

"Just because it’s the first sentient computer program ever invented doesn’t mean I was careless. I’ve read all the Sci-fi. I know what not to do. It’s perfectly harmless."

"Nothing’s perfectly harmless."

"This is. And I made it incredibly loyal. Its only desire is to make you happy. This program is a couple million dollars in your pocket, Mr. Thewood. And nine months of my time, which you haven’t paid me for yet, so I’d appreciate it if ... "

A fresh look of greed entered Mr. Thewood’s eyes, and he wrote Eldon a check for two hundred thousand dollars. "I expect a full refund if the program goes wacko on me. I’ll need the money to fly to Korea, or somewhere where they haven’t heard my name. And I will hold you entirely responsible, so if anyone gets hurt, you’re going to jail. You still want to sell me your little program?"

Eldon smiled. Now, this was more the kind of man he liked. Cautious, but willing in the end. "You bet." He stuffed the check in his pocket and walked out, feeling confident.

=================================================
#5

Sammie spread her bedroom curtains apart just a little to check. Those Pinter boys were still out there, skateboarding, waiting for her to go out and leave it unguarded. Well, they weren’t going to get it. She went back to it now, to where it was hidden among the model horses on her toy shelf, a little lump of crystal that looked flat black most of the time, but lit up a little inside once you’d held it a while. She peered in again. It was true, you could see something inside it, a little clearer every time. It was beginning to look like a little city, maybe. Or some kind of crystals growing inside the crystal, or something.

Those Pinters would have to go home for supper some time. It was already getting dark. But Sammie still felt jumpy, so she decided to find a better place to hide it.

=================================================

More information:
Anyone can rate any or all of the pieces submitted. You don’t have to have been involved before, and you don’t have to have written a submission of your own.

Each week, rate on how well each piece of the story worked for you as part of the story we’re constructing to date. The lowest possible rating is a 1, meaning the story didn’t work at all for you on any level. The highest possible rating is a 10, meaning the piece was wonderfully executed, continued the story in a satisfying way on all levels, and added depth, meaning and/or interest to the experience of reading it.

Any comments you can make as to how effectively the piece continued to carry or failed to continue to carry the story are great. You don’t have to comment on any given piece if you don’t want.

Each submission has a number associated with it. Please post your ratings here. Here’s one suggested format, showing the piece number, the rating, and comments below.

Piece #12: 6
The episode with the meteor was really enjoyable.
I didn’t understand the part about the ball bearings.

#13: 3

#14: 8
Loved the mermaid.

[etc.]

The overall rating for each piece will be the average of those ratings actually given to it. A piece that doesn’t receive any ratings can’t be the piece used to continue the story.

You can submit your ratings anonymously by e-mailing them to me at luc@meadowdance.org.

You don't have to pick a favorite: Just rate each piece on its own merits.

Thanks for sitting through the long introduction. On to the rating!

Luc

#1: 9

i really like this one. has a very Douglas Adams feel. could be fun.

#2: 8

#3: 4

#4: 6

#1 9 Lots of potential for development

#2 4 Didn't ring my bell

#3 5 Description too vague

#4 5 Too convoluted to start

#5 8 Most well-written, but I prefer straightforward SF

============

#1 7 Liked the situation and the problem being presented right off. Lighter treatment than I normally enjoy.

#3 6

#4 5 Interested in the characters, less so in the situation. Some of the wording kept me less involved in the story than I would otherwise be.

#1: 3
Spaceships popping up seemed very unrealistic. If meant to be light-hearted and comedic, I would have liked to have seen some comdey to let me know.

#2: 7
Grabbed my attention. A little part of me is trying to tell me that there's a cliche somewhere, but the rest of me doesn't care.

#4: 6
Seems like it's headed down a path well-travelled, but it was very well written.

OK, first week results are complete! Final scores as I get them are:

#1, "It was one of those completely quiet nights ...": 7.4

#2, "'Whoa, whoa, don’t lift off yet!'": 5.8

#3, "The leaves were falling like rain that morning ...": 4.6

#4, "'This isn’t what I asked for.'": 6.0

#5, "Sammie spread her bedroom curtains apart just a little ...": 7.2

So: close in the end, but #1 has it.

We seemed to have a lot of difference of opinion about #s 1, 2, and 5, even though I noticed people went out of the way not to let their personal genre preferences influence the scores too strongly (good for you!).

We seemed to favor quite short beginnings that immediately plunge into some kind of conflict. Two people mentioned the light character of the first (winning) piece and said they weren't crazy about that.

The one piece that sought to establish only character and not an initial conflict (at least, that was my reading) really seemed to take it on the chin. Apparently we strongly favor getting some kind of involving issue out immediately.

Pieces that didn't immediately grab us and/or ones that felt familiar seemed to rate pretty low. OK, so that's kind of self-evident.

Anyone else have any observations on this?

For this week (deadline: 9 PM EST Thursday), anyone who likes could write a piece continuing #1. As before, please e-mail it to luc@meadowdance.org for anonymous posting after the deadline.

If you submit a piece this week, it should continue effectively from where paragraph #1 lets off. Length can be anything up to 1,000 words again. Please post here with any questions.

Thanks, and looking forward to seeing the story continue!

Don't forget, deadline for continuations of the story so far is Thursday at 9PM EST -- please e-mail your continuations to luc@meadowdance.org. For reference, here's the beginning of our story again:

It was one of those completely quiet nights in the mountains. The kind of quiet that even the crickets seemed reluctant to disturb. That's why Jason Fine was so surprised when he glanced out the window and saw the spaceship sitting in his backyard.

"When the hell did that get here?" he mused.

Which brings up a point that might be educational for me: Are there times when I'm writing a story when I avoid something that might make the story better because it will make it more difficult for me as a writer to continue the story?

quote:

---

Are there times when I'm writing a story when I avoid something that might make the story better because it will make it more difficult for me as a writer to continue the story?

---

OK, so anyone who'd like to participate rates some or all of these submissions on a scale of 1-10 in terms of how engaging they are and how well they continue the story. Any comments you can make about the kinds of decisions that were made would be interesting. Please refer to other posts or e-mail me if you have questions or would like a lengthier explanation.

You can post your ratings here or e-mail them to luc@meadowdance.org. I'll post the ratings as they're received.

Sunday at 9PM EST I'll tabulate and we'll find out which piece will continue.

- Luc

---
Here is the beginning to our story. All of the submissions are ways the story can be continued.

OUR STORY SO FAR
----------------
It was one of those completely quiet nights in the mountains. The kind of quiet that even the crickets seemed reluctant to disturb. That's why Jason Fine was so surprised when he glanced out the window and saw the spaceship sitting in his backyard.

"When the hell did that get here?" he mused.

THE PROPOSED CONTINUATIONS
--------------------------

#6

"Mom, come here!"

"I'm washing dishes," Jason's mother yelled from downstairs.

"Come quick, seriously!" Jason shouted. "You've got to see this!" He ran to the window and took a good look at the thing. Not a flying saucer out of a late-night movie, exactly, but it had to be a spaceship. There was a door opening. Jason glued his face to the cold glass. Snow began to drift down over the bulgy, helmet-like shape of the space ship.

His mother opened the door and strode in at the same moment that a tube extended from the ship to the ground, where it ended in a kind of doorway. A short, chunky-looking creature with four hands and bulging eyeballs walked out.

"What?" snapped Jason's mom.

"The spaceship!" Jason breathed. "The little space guy!"

Jason's mom marched over beside him and looked out the window. "Very funny. Where?"

"There! Right there! In the yard!"

"Jason, I am tired of being called up here every ten minutes," Jason's mom said in a steely voice, and she grabbed him by the ear the way she used to do when he was eight or ten years old.

"Jason's in trouble!" sang his sister Kandi from the hallway.

The little space guy waved.

---
#7

"When the hell did that get here?" he mused. "Better not be after the
chickens."

He moved the sheer curtain a bit to see better, and after a glance at the
chicken coop - nothing unusual on that front - stood there contemplating the
addition to his yard, his eyes narrowed. There was no movement from the
thing, no venting steam, no sound or even a smell wafting through the
cracked window. It just sat there silently, lit by the single bright
floodlight attached to his barn.

Jason stood for a moment more, then let the curtain fall. Though he didn’t
realize it, it was significant that the spaceship had chosen Jason Fine's
yard to land in, instead of, for instance, his neighbor's yard down the
road. Jason wasn’t surprised by much -- not his niece’s tattooed boyfriend,
not the two-headed calf born last spring, and not by a spaceship
materializing in his yard in the dead of night. Even if everyone knew that
such things existed only on the TV. Had he thought about it, he could have
easily imagined his immediate neighbors’ reaction -- the astonishment,
followed by hysterics, and the inevitable calling of police. But Jason’s
reaction was quite different, and the decision that he’d made in those few
seconds at the window would change the course of two star systems.

He walked down the hall toward the back door, his pace measured with
deliberation rather than fear. As he passed the gun cabinet he hesitated for
a moment, but decided against it. Now he was at the door, and the spaceship
was on the other side. He paused as the thought occurred that maybe that
thing wasn’t a spaceship. Could very well be those hellraisers down the
road, playing some sort of trick on him. But no. It was way too big, and had
appeared way too quietly, and those kids were way too noisy to pull a stunt
like that. And he hadn’t failed to notice the way the ground had sank a bit
under it. He gripped the smooth knob, and the thought occurred to him that
he was very glad that his wife was away visiting her sister in Boise.

---
#8

Jason haphazardly swiped at the dirty dish in his hand while he studied the
small craft. It was a dull gray streaked with black around the front
window, or at least what he assumed was the front window. No lights. No
markings. Just a hunk of metal obliterating his wife’s flowerbed. As far
as spaceships went, it was down right disappointing.

"Honey, I think you might want to have a look at this," he called into the
direction of the living room, his eyes never leaving the object in the yard.
Marcy would never forgive him for not telling her something happened to
her prized mums. Or that they had visitors from another planet.

"I’m not coming in there until you’ve got those dishes done. It’s your turn
and you aren’t sweet talking me into doing them for you."

"This isn’t about weaseling out of the dishes..." Jason’s reply tapered off
as a piece of the craft’s side broke away from the body of the ship and slid
to one side. A beam of light shot out of the exposed portal and swept
across the yard. Then a figure stepped out.

The dish in Jason’s hands fell into the sink with a clatter.

---
#9

He had not heard a thing in the deep silence of the surrounding mountains,
not the hushed braking of retro-thrusters whispering through the passes nor
the locking of landing struts echoing across the slumbering lake beyond his
cabin. True, the transport had not been due for another three Earth hours
and his final packing had claimed his attention, but a landing spaceship
slipping outside his personal radar meant he was getting sloppy.

He sighed with a well-practiced imitation of an Earthling, feeling once again
the conflict of his reluctance to leave the planet and his anxiety to be gone
from it, but ended his sigh with a genuinely alarmed intake of breath. The
night clouds that broke in a ragged opening around the moon increased the
illumination reflecting off the iridescent hull of the spaceship and revealed
the fluted edges along its lateral flanges, an identifying feature of a
Dawkin stealthcraft.

Somehow they had found him.

He counted it a stroke of luck that he had glanced out the window when he
did. With a swiftness that belied his human body, he grabbed only his
shoulder pack and sprinted for the front door. They may have already
surrounded the cabin, he thought as he hesitated for the smallest of moments,
but there's no other way. He left the thought at the door as he sped into
the outside darkness toward the lake, the lighter Earth gravity a decided
advantage for him.

---
#10

"Three days ago, honey," Rita said, not turning from the shopping show she was
watching. "I told you I bought it, remember?"

Jason remembered having got upset about something expensive she had bought
without his permission, but he was fairly sure it wasn't a spaceship. He would
have remembered that. "That's right," he told his wife.

Earlier in the evening Jason had noticed the Schmidts' cocker spaniel was
unusually quiet. Maybe the aliens had abducted her; that would be the nicest
thing that had happened to Jason all week. But, if his luck held, the Schmidts
would probably blame him for Kiki-bear's disappearance and make him pay for her.
He wondered if there were a way he could arrange to be abducted and get the
aliens to leave Kiki-bear behind.

"Where you going, honey?" Rita called as he pulled on a coat and opened the back
door.

"Out," Jason answered, and he shut the door behind him.

---
#11

[I used /s to indicate italics from the original.]

Of course, as any rational person knows, a spaceship isn't the kind of thing you want in your backyard when you're expecting company. Jason put down his broom, pulled an old sweatshirt over his dress clothes, and went to attend to the matter.

"Excuse me." His breath froze before him as he spoke. "Excuse me, but you can't park here." He traversed the lawn and paused beside the cherry red hull of the monster. Silence. "Excuse me." Jason rapped at the side of the ship. More silence. He moved to knock again when he heard it: a faint, distant "thump."

"Beg your pardon?" He put an ear against the ship. A pause, then another barely audible "thump." Jason pulled away. /Oh dear. Car doors./ He spun around and sprinted back to the house. As the scuffle of feet approached, Jason made a mad dash from window to window, pulling curtains down and blinds shut.

The doorbell rang a mix of high, resonating melodies -- the kind of sound that indicates the doorbell costs more than the door, and that, in Jason's case, it must have been an impulse buy. He cringed and dashed into the kitchen. The broom stood propped up against the refrigerator amid a pile of cleaning instruments. "Just a moment!" he called, hurrying over to them, "Just a mo--" and he was on the floor, a wet sponge by his side. Another polyphony from the doorbell. "Oh, I'm coming dammit." Jason rose, rubbed his bum, and scrambled to collect the items. A quick look around and he tossed them into the pantry.

Jason took a deep breath. /Well, that'll do. Just have to make it through tonight. And I'll do it; even with a million spaceships I'd do it./ He walked, as casually as a man in his particular situation could hope, to the front door and pulled it open.

"Well I never!" said a short, middle-aged woman, her hands at her hips. "You know it's rude to keep your guests wait..."

"Hello, Mrs. Durnup, Mr. Durnup. Nice of you to visit." Jason smiled one of those really wide, strained smiles you see sometimes, the kind that looks almost inhuman. Of course, Jason was human, but if Mr. and Mrs. Durnup had been anybody but them (that is to say, if they were far less wrapped up in their own affairs) they would have wondered. However, being that they were, in fact, themselves, they instead gave a:

"Hello Mr. Fine," and left it at that.

"Won't you come in?" Another exceptionally large, forced smile.

"Yes of cour--" Mrs. Durnup stumbled back, knocking Mr. Durnup's rounded form back with her. "What, what is that?"

Jason's stomach sank to his toes and stayed there.

"What?"

"That." She raised a finger to his sweatshirt. It was an old gray thing with blobs of grease and the occasional dripping of nacho cheese stained generously about.

"Oh, well, that..." His stomach rose again, but not quite all the way. It moved between his knees and liver for a bit, then settled for the bladder.

"Hardly appropriate attire for this sort of business, you know." She scowled.
---
#12

Usually you heard them coming: It's not like they were silent. You'd hear a noise like a vacuum cleaner fighting a cat, and something would fly over and your electricity would turn off and your VCR would reset to 12:00. Jason had long since set his word processor to auto-save every two minutes, but the VCR problem bugged the hell out of him.

Twenty years ago, when he was still a relatively young man, he would have been amazed to see a space ship at all, but these days Whitepeak, Colorado was a mecca for secret alien visitors because of the Caverns. There was actually a whole extraterrestrial ghetto of a kind built into the mountain about half a mile away from the Caverns, and some of the restaurants there were outstanding. Most of the food was poison, of course, but a lot of the rest was delicious. There was an eyeball salad he got sometimes at a little Canopian cafe there that was, well, out of this world.

Well, time to get the bozo out of the back yard. Jason sighed, put down his glasses, and took the Antarean destabilizer gun off its hook by the office door. You could never be too careful with these guys.

---
#13
[This one arrived belatedly due to mailing problems.]
Strolling downstairs in his BVDs and undershirt, he wondered what to say to the ship's occupants, assuming there were any. Greetings? Klaatu? Get the hell off my land?

"No where's private anymore," he grumbled, yanking open the door to his cabin. "Freaking aliens, dropping down wherever they want, without so much as a sorry for crushing your mums...." It was better in the old days, when the spaceships were kind enough to land only in remote cornfields. Back then, most folks could still laugh off the idea of alien visitors because they were hardly ever seen, certainly not by anyone of consequence.

Not anymore. Now they plunked down all the time, everywhere. Middle of the highway, back of a house, smack dab in a football stadium. Then there was the particularly large one that took out the Eiffel Tower, causing the Frenchies to surrender. Boy, did they have crepe on their faces when they realized the aliens weren't trying to take over and in fact dropped off a new and much shinier tower as an apology only a few days later.

"You'd think they'd confine their student drivers to an emptier section of the universe," snorted Jason as he approached the ship in his backyard. "Replacement landmarks must cost 'em a fortune!"

6: 5. Kind of cliche. I also don't want to go juvenile.
7: 6. All right; steps out of Jason's head big time in the third paragraph,
which is disjointing.
8: 7. Exposition good, but doesn't really wow me.
9: 9. Very interesting! Already establishes tension, a few surprises, setting,
and character. A little confusing, though.
10: 8. Getting things going with plot and characters; not really anything
spectacular, though.
11: 6. Had funny moments, but seemed to be trying too hard; also delaying
confrontation with the aliens for what looks to be something silly.
12: 8. Very well written, interesting setting development. Not terribly
promising story-wise (but maybe I lack imagination).
13: 8. Again, really great setting, fun voice, but limiting plot-wise. Also,
seems to step out of character from the first section a bit.

---

7: 7
Nicely developed, and did a good job of explaining how Jason took things in stride, but not of why he would, which made it less effective to my eye. Liked the "fate of two star systems" thing.

8: 5

9: 7
Effectively initiates a kind of thriller story and introduces some interesting possible elements; no sense of character yet.

10: 8
Enjoyed the fun and humor, and the weird possibility of Rita pulling a fast one, and Jason's apparent onset of senility.

11: 6
Tone felt a little forced to me. Enjoyed the rapid escalation of tension somewhat despite this.

6:6 not sure if i like the child protagonist, but it holds promise. could be turned into a variety of things: anything from a children/YA scifi thing to a tale about a psychologically disturbed youth.

7:5 like the hinting at the overall plot, but Jason's character seems a bit unbelievable.

8:7 well executed, easy to follow. doesn't do much to further the plot. characters somewhat engaging.

10:8 i like the misunderstanding (right?) between Jason and his wife. characters believable. lots of potential.

12:6 very entertaining, but doesn't offer a lot of options.

13:7

---

The risk we run if we rate as writers rather than readers is of coming out with a story that was fun or easy to write, but that isn't as appealing to a reader.

Any thoughts or alternative points of view on this?

#6: 5 Opening tone doesn’t sound right for a kid. Also, written like small
child, but facts of text claim older than 12. Doesn’t jive.

#7: 5 Third paragraph gave away too much, and doesn’t fit with tone of the
rest of the section. Didn’t set right with me.

#9: 9 Kept my interest, wanted to know more.

#10: 9 Situation has humor, was interesting. Characters have potential.

#11: 4 I was completely disinterested in the conversation with the guests.
It just didn’t work for me.

#12: 8 Interesting situation developed.

Surely passion should inflame our writing, and choosing something that doesn't engage us as readers may not be the best way to go. With all of us contributing what intrigues us as both writers and readers, the final product may be a little disjointed in style, but it stands the best chance of sizzling.

Here are some new ratings for us!

#6 6 Thought this was cute. The little alien wave at the end made me chuckle.

#7 5 Didn't match the beginning and though interesting, was a little heavy for my taste.
---
#8 8 I'd like to follow this and see where it goes.

#9 7 Thought this was a clever direction to take it in. Although more dramatic than the beginning, this reason for Jason's initial mild reaction would fit.

#10 5 Didn't hold my interest as well as some of the other offerings.

A fairly close runner-up, interestingly, did *not* plunge right into the action -- but did plunge immediately into what seemed to me like a significant conflict and something of a mystery. That piece (#10) seemed to establish an interesting character dynamic right off. It didn't address the character's offhand response to the spaceship directly, but to me it did seem consistent so far.

Based on reactions last week and this week, it seems as though the pieces with a young protagonist don't come through well here. Someone pointed out that a young protagonist tends to imply YA fiction, which I suppose is true from a marketing standpoint.

Several people mentioned that they enjoyed humor, but more humorous treatments (despite being potentially very consistent with the original piece) did not grab people as much as the more serious pieces.

Pieces with unusual ideas (including the one we selected) seemed to also get "extra points."

It looks like we may have a special area for the Challenge soon; I'll keep you posted. In the mean time I'll keep making this thread long.

Final scores:
#6 ("Mom, come here!" - "I'm washing dishes,")
Avg rating: 5.6

#7 ("When the hell did that get here?" he mused. "Better not be after the chickens.")
Avg rating: 5.67

#8 ("Jason haphazardly swiped at the dirty dish in his hand while he studied the small craft.")
Avg rating: 6.4

#9 ("He had not heard a thing in the deep silence of the surrounding mountains, not the hushed braking of retro-thrusters ...")
Avg rating: 8.2 (TOP SELECTION)

#10 ("Three days ago, honey," Rita said, not turning from the shopping show she was watching. "I told you I bought it, remember?")
Avg rating: 7.67

#11 ("Of course, as any rational person knows, a spaceship isn't the kind of thing you want in your backyard when you're expecting company.")
Avg rating: 5.4

#12 ("Usually you heard them coming: It's not like they were silent. You'd hear a noise like a vacuum cleaner fighting a cat ...")
Avg rating: 7

#13 ("Strolling downstairs in his BVDs and undershirt, he wondered what to say to the ship's occupants")
Avg rating: 7

Submit your continuation of this story by Thursday, 9 PM EST! It looks as though one submission per person is probably best at this point, since participation has been quite good so far (in order not to make the process overwhelming).

So our story so far goes like this. Sorry to re-post here, but I wanted to put it somewhere where it would be easy to look at the whole thing so far. When our area is ready this will be in a special thread.

Luc

----------------------

It was one of those completely quiet nights in the mountains. The kind of quiet that even the crickets seemed reluctant to disturb. That's why Jason Fine was so surprised when he glanced out the window and saw the spaceship sitting in his backyard.

"When the hell did that get here?" he mused.

He had not heard a thing in the deep silence of the surrounding mountains, not the hushed braking of retro-thrusters whispering through the passes nor the locking of landing struts echoing across the slumbering lake beyond his cabin. True, the transport had not been due for another three Earth hours and his final packing had claimed his attention, but a landing spaceship slipping outside his personal radar meant he was getting sloppy.

He sighed with a well-practiced imitation of an Earthling, feeling once again the conflict of his reluctance to leave the planet and his anxiety to be gone from it, but ended his sigh with a genuinely alarmed intake of breath. The night clouds that broke in a ragged opening around the moon increased the illumination reflecting off the iridescent hull of the spaceship and revealed the fluted edges along its lateral flanges, an identifying feature of a Dawkin stealthcraft.

Somehow they had found him.

He counted it a stroke of luck that he had glanced out the window when he did. With a swiftness that belied his human body, he grabbed only his shoulder pack and sprinted for the front door. They may have already surrounded the cabin, he thought as he hesitated for the smallest of moments, but there's no other way. He left the thought at the door as he sped into the outside darkness toward the lake, the lighter Earth gravity a decided advantage for him.

But since "winning the game" (developing a satisfying resolution to the most basic conflicts or problems the story presents) is of enormous importance in storytelling, certainly the entire team needs to start going in the same direction at some point, unless someone is able to wrap up the story all in one 400-word (or OK, 800-word) bit without "help" from previous pieces.

-- Luc

It was one of those completely quiet nights in the mountains. The kind of quiet that even the crickets seemed reluctant to disturb. That's why Jason Fine was so surprised when he glanced out the window and saw the spaceship sitting in his backyard.

"When the hell did that get here?" he mused.

He had not heard a thing in the deep silence of the surrounding mountains, not the hushed braking of retro-thrusters whispering through the passes nor the locking of landing struts echoing across the slumbering lake beyond his cabin. True, the transport had not been due for another three Earth hours and his final packing had claimed his attention, but a landing spaceship slipping outside his personal radar meant he was getting sloppy.

He sighed with a well-practiced imitation of an Earthling, feeling once again the conflict of his reluctance to leave the planet and his anxiety to be gone from it, but ended his sigh with a genuinely alarmed intake of breath. The night clouds that broke in a ragged opening around the moon increased the illumination reflecting off the iridescent hull of the spaceship and revealed the fluted edges along its lateral flanges, an identifying feature of a Dawkin stealthcraft.

Somehow they had found him.

He counted it a stroke of luck that he had glanced out the window when he did. With a swiftness that belied his human body, he grabbed only his shoulder pack and sprinted for the front door. They may have already surrounded the cabin, he thought as he hesitated for the smallest of moments, but there's no other way. He left the thought at the door as he sped into the outside darkness toward the lake, the lighter Earth gravity a decided advantage for him.

=======================================

#14
By the time he reached the edge of the lake, they were after him. He could hear their boots snapping twigs and crunching leaves. You're gonna have to work a whole lot harder to earn those merit badges in stealth, Jason thought. He glanced around, then sprang straight up onto a wide branch of an oak tree, about ten feet off the ground. He shimmied up until he felt comfortably camouflaged by the thick, leafy overhang, then watched from his perch as the soldiers approached.

There were about ten of them, clad in dark camouflage gear and with night scopes on their rifles. They fanned out, searching the area, but of course finding nothing. He remained absolutely still as one pointed his scope up in the direction of his tree.. The soldier's standard-issue human eyes missed him entirely. After about fifteen minutes, they regrouped and moved deeper into the woods, heading around to the east side of the lake.

"I guess that means I go west," Jason sighed, dropping down from the tree. He glanced at his watch. About two and a half hours left until the transport arrived. He reset the homing device in his watchband, and headed off. He made it about a dozen paces before a voice from behind him froze him in his tracks.

"Surprise, Jason," it said. "Assuming that's what you're still calling yourself."

---

#15
His luck held. Jason slipped between the silvery pines just as he heard a heavy metallic scrape.Heavy bodies ground against the stone walkway surrounding the cabin. Distance and the trees soon muffled any sound from that lone dwelling, but in his mind the distinctive tread of Dawkin footsteps beat clear and chilling.

As Jason neared the edge of the lake, an explosion rocked against the mountains. He stumbled to the ground, rolling back to his feet in a fluid movement. Glancing back, he could just make out the flame arching skyward from were the cabin had been.

Too close. Much to close.

Iona had told him how it would be. But had he listened? He wondered if they had taken Iona. That was one of the few trails that could have led the Dawkin to him. Not that it took much.

Suddenly he was aware that he was not alone on the lakeshore. Realizing who it was, he cursed inwardly. She could not be here now. This was not how this was supposed to work out for her.

“Jason? Is that you?” Her soft human voice called out, sounding loud and shrill in the once again still night.

“Hannah, go home.” Jason started moving again.

“I saw the flames. I had to know it you were all right.” The light in her hand bounced wildly as she hurried toward him, her feet squishing in the soft earth near the water. Then she paused, a look of astonishment on her face. “Jason?” she asked, the name trailing away into nothing.

A void filled by the rhythm of heavy footsteps.

---

#16
Behind him he heard the splintering of one of the cabin doors. He knew he had only seconds to reach the lake, under whose depths a labyrinth of tunnels wound into the cores of the mountains where he and the others had done their research. Empty now, the deep mountain corridors had given the Leganty scientists a front row seat to the Dawkin preliminary invasion of Earth.

As he ran, Jason’s thoughts raced as well. If the Dawkin stealthcraft had intercepted the Leganty ship as it left Earth for the Grand Colonial Council, Hedra and Gaff might even now be Dawkin prisoners. Jason felt an involuntary shudder rumble through him, weakening his knees momentarily. Granted, Hedra and Gaff had known the risks before signing up for the Planetary Protection Team, as Jason had, but the thought of Hedra, especially, on that Dawkin stealthcraft next to his cabin chilled him.

Jason’s feet hit the rocky area around the lake. He needed to stay hidden until the transport arrived. Although not a military ship, it would have a pulsar capable of vaporizing the stealthcraft. In this quadrant, all ships carried disintegration weaponry so as not to leave evidence of the existence of life beyond the quadrant. The Council demanded it. If Jason could hide in one of the tunnels beneath the lake until the transport arrived, he would have a chance. If Hedra and Gaff had not slipped past the stealthcraft, they had no chance on Earth, literally, and the thought tore at Jason’s dual hearts.

---

#17
He expected disaster so intensely, he could almost feel the prickle of a stasis charge hit him in the back as he ran, but in reality there was nothing. He could see a faint trace of something in the infrared off to the right, but it was too small and quick to be one of the Dawkin, so he ignored it. Probably a fox. It skittered through the undergrowth, whatever it was, disappearing into the cold columns of the great pine trees.

He covered the half mile to the lake in less than twenty seconds, and paused at the edge for a moment to seal his shoulder pack for the dive. He would dive to the bottom of the lake and go into hibernation, counting on the water-hating Dawkin to give up on finding him within a few days. He’d half-wake every day or so to take a few breaths at the surface and scan for activity. He should swim out to the middle, where --

“Rockculler?” something chirped. It was speaking the Caulish trade language. “Are you Rockculler? What a weird getup.” Jason cursed himself for ignoring the little heat-sign in the woods. There’s no reason the Dawkin Committee in that ship might not have brought help of another species -- and there was no reason to think that the help couldn’t swim if he dove for it. He spun around. He needed to know what he was facing -- but even as he turned, it finally dawned on him that the creature had used his real name. And it certainly didn’t sound like a Dawkin henchman. It raced forward out of the shadows, flicking its way through the undergrowth with its long crabby legs as it floated on a null gravity plate. Of course: A Suplid. Not with the Dawkin at all. Friendly, but absolutely reckless -- at least the males were, and the females stayed on Suplia.

“Quiet!” Jason said in Caulish. He wished he had studied the language better: he needed some pretty strong words right about now. How did you say “moron” in Caulish? Or “dung-headed bastard”?

“What’s the matter? There’s not a human for miles; I scanned before I landed.”

“There are Dawkin, you -- not-wise person!” Jason composed himself. He had been among humans too long; he was getting out of the habit of balancing his spiritual center. He took a couple of deep breaths and found his balance.

“Dawkin?” said the Suplid. “There weren’t any Dawkin with me. I came alone.”

“They must have followed you. Are you in a stealth ship?” Of course it wasn’t; it was a Suplid. Stealth would imply caution -- or common sense.

“Of course not,” it said. “Anyway, I know you have a transport coming, but the Council of Great-Grandmothers back on Suplia sent me to offer you employment.”

“I’m retired.”

“Wait, let me tell you what it is first! You’d only have to stay in that human body for a little while longer, and you’re going to love the perks we’re offering.”

“No. No thank you. Contact me when I’m back on Occa Prime. I have a Brobdignite assistant; it can --”

“No time -- sorry. Actually, it would be ideal if you would come with me right away and let me explain as we’re moving. Our Council --”

There was a heat-trace in the wood, something tall and very hot. “A Dawkin! Get in the water!” Jason hissed.

---

#18
A voice rose from the house, unsteady with age but as loud as ever. “Jason? Come put on a scarf, honey.” He froze under the trees; yes, he had to run from the Dawkin, but no human had any chance of escaping them. A human was as flimsy to a Dawkin as a mound of soap suds.

Was there time? Probably not, but he couldn't leave her to the Dawkin. There were any number of times over the last twenty years when only his association with Agnes, his "adopted aunt," kept him from blowing his human cover entirely.

Agnes moved unsteadily into the floodlight in front of the cabin. His stomachs churning with anxiety, Jason pulled her into the darkness of the trees.

“The Dawkin are here, Aunt Agnes,” he whispered. “We have to get away.”

Agnes turned a tender gaze on him. “Oh, your space creatures again. Poor man, come inside. I’m sure they’ll let you put on your scarf before they capture you.”

Not for the first time, Jason felt impotent fury at Agnes’ unyielding skepticism about “space creatures.” There were times when she almost had him convinced he wasn’t a Drallic courier, but just a confused and bewildered human -- but this was not one of those times.

---

#19
For the thirty-one years he had been on Earth, Jae Sonfinn had been prepared to leave. He had written his suicide intent letter to his human wife on the day he married her, in case he felt the need to disappear without explanation. He kept it in a small pocket of his pack, so that as he left, he only had to leave it on the kitchen table. The Ottrys, named affectionately for that sweet Nyssim female Jae had spent a delicious year with, lay at the bottom of the lake, perpetually ready for take-off. He performed routine maintenance on his radar systems every three months, and he always carried a Brigger stick, just in case he ran into anyone who recognized his face. When someone's name is third on every most-wanted list in the Milky Way, he has to be prepared.

So how had they gotten past his detection? Had Earth made him soft?

It was a possibility Jae did not like to consider. He considered Earth the best decision he had made so far and had a special affinity for the planet. Its virgin natural resources sold hideously well throughout the galaxy--The prime minister herself owned a side-table imbedded with ivory. The scent industry seemed overdeveloped on Earth as well; Jae didn't care much for what the Earthlings called "perfume," but the lilac scent sold especially well among the aristocracy of Fisub. But then the Fisubians never did like bathing much.

Best of all, in all his time on Earth, he hadn't had to do anything really illegal. Yes, landing on Earth was crime enough to cost him a couple million Milkies if anyone found out, but what profitable endeavor didn't involve risks? And Earth had been a VERY profitable endeavor. She had made him more money than any other project so far, except of course blackmailing Gurto Hunida.

In fact, he had been so good and quiet for so long that some even dared to say the formidable Jae Sonfinn had been finally found and lynched. He liked it that way--less nights like this. No matter how prepared Jae had learned to be, he never liked running.

Jae reached the shore of the lake and dived in, so far seeming to have eluded the police. His Brigger stick recharged in his pocket the moment it came in contact with the water; that was good. For four minutes he swam through the cold, black water to the place where the Ottrys lay. He palmed the hatch open and stepped inside, dripping and cold, but thinking the great Jae Sonfinn had once again narrowly escaped capture. Congratulating himself, he reached for a towel.

"Good evening, Mr. Sonfinn," said an unmistakably human voice. He looked up to see a woman standing in the linen closet. Eight more humans stepped out from various hiding places around the cabin, each leveling a Brigger stick in his direction. "Would you like a drink?"

Here are some I thought of:
- The Dawkin(s) catch(es) or shoots or stuns him as soon as he emerges from the door. One variation of this: there is a trap right outside the door.
- Someone immediately rescues him, since otherwise he'd be toast

There have to be other ones, but at the moment I'm fresh out. What else could we have done?

Oh -- and it occurs to me that every one of our pieces had him escaping the immediate danger, which from a disinterested perspective was a less likely possibility than immediate capture or ambush. Were we all instinctively avoiding harm to our protagonist out of sympathy for him, or were we putting off the inevitable (sez me) confrontation with the Dawkin(s) for some other reason?

Luc

Anyroad, I'd like to hear how others are handling the evaluations as regards their own entry. Not evaluating your own would automatically negate anonymity of voting. Evaluating your own entry entails the bias minefield.

So far, I evaluate the other entries first as though mine wasn't there, then try to honestly as possible see where I think mine belongs in the hierarchy.

I think, coming from my own thoughts as I was writing my entry, that people delayed capture to build more suspense. We aren’t very far into the story at this point – just set an initial premise and establish a bit of character. Several people have set it up for capture in the next segment so it’s still an avenue to explore.

I guess another option would for him to have fought back in some way, instead of running.

quote:

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And by knowing how the author of #102 rated everything, you get to see how people’s writing styles merge with their reading interests, with is sort of interesting if you start comparing things

---

Since some of us have refrained from evaluating two entries, which may or may not include the evaluator's own entry, these kind of comparisons are not possible. Not that they're necessary, just not possible. To do it, everyone would have to put an actual rating on each entry not his own. Maybe rather than just skip an evaluation not ours, we should enter a "0." I don't know.

Also, we never did determine if all the authors would remain anonymous when all was said and done, and that, too might influence voting anonymity and whether or not we should abstain from self evaluation.

P.S. Talk about evaluations. My cat threw up today on my desk and my latest chapter rewrites.

That said, if nobody minds and some people would prefer it, we can make it one of the procedures that we don't rate our own pieces. Should we do that?

In the mean time, fresh ratings for this week!

Luc

#14 -- 5 Liked the ending sentence, but the rest didn’t really catch my
interest.
#16 -- 5 All the thinking is slowing down the action, and I situation
outlined didn’t catch my interest.
#17 -- 7 Suplid may a be fun wrench thrown in things
#18 -- 8 Agnes adds an interesting complication
#19 -- 4 I didn’t care for the sudden name switch to Jae Sonfinn out of the
blue, and while the long internal monologue has good stuff in it, it really
pulls away from the action that the previous section is calling out for.

---

#14 -- 4
Some elements that were interesting to me, but the last line seemed kind of cliched to me, and I didn't understand why there were humans (rather than Dawkin or Dawkins, whatever they were - who unlike normal humans came in a space ship) after Jason

#15 -- 5
I liked that additional characters were beginning to be drawn into the story, but was unhappy that I didn't know who either of the new ones were by the end of the bit. I would have preferred to be introduced properly to one. It seemed highly coincidental that someone he knew was down by the water in the dark. Prose was bolstered with lots of adjectives and adverbs, which kind of gave it a "trying real hard" feel to me.

#16 -- 7
Liked the situation that was being depicted (scientists watching the invasion of earth) and the idea of tunnels underneath the mountain and the two other characters being somewhere out there. Use of the word "pulsar" (considering its astronomical definition) was weird. I was disappointed that it seemed to be implied that Hedda was a female by the 'a' on the end of her name, a romance language convention showing up in an entirely alien language -- also that Jason's race seems to consider females more vulnerable, like some Earth cultures. True, Hedda might not be a female, but it seemed to be presented that way.

#19 -- 7
Liked the character and some of the fleshing out of the background, particularly the fact that we now know why he's on the run, and from whom. Had trouble with some of the exposition, which slowed the story to fill in information. Don't like the person (the character is interesting to me, but stopped having any sympathy for him when I got to the suicide note part, because his "wife" will probably be screwed up for the rest of her life from that and it seems a rotten thing to do). Was slightly thrown off by switching from calling the character "Jason" to "Jae," and actually had trouble believing that his name in his own language was "Jae Sonfinn." Any alien language that's easy to represent in English is a bit of a belief issue, but we tend to suspend disbelief on those because other techniques are so much more cumbersome - unless the writer brings our attention to it, as is the case for me with "Jae Sonfinn."

The last line of this also felt kind of cliched to me.

quote:

---

Since some of us have refrained from evaluating two entries, which may or may not include the evaluator's own entry, these kind of comparisons are not possible.

---

Actually, why, excluding your own entry, would there be any reason not to evaluate one of the segments? I’ve wondered about that…

Got some more ratings for us. Here we go:

14 -- 8 Liked the use of the lighter Earth gravity enabling Jason to leap into the tree. Liked his self-assuredness. Confused about the human eye reference, since the soldier was using a scope on his weapon. Also wondered why pursuers were human, not Dawkin.

15 -- 5 The heavy bodies grinding against the stone walkway threw me--at first thought they were being dragged. Began pretty well, but lost its sense of urgency. A soft voice may be loud in a quiet setting, but shrill? Also a soft voice speaking wildly didn't jive. Thought the silvery pines went well with the metallic scrape, a nice use of a similarity as a contrast (one metal good--helps hide Jason; one metal bad--indicates his pursuers)

17 -- 4 The Suplid too much like Jar-Jar Binks, consequently too annoying. The water-hating Dawkin a nice touch, but didn't inspire me.

18 -- 6 A different approach, but if Jason was concerned about Aunt Agnes, why did he run out and leave her in the cabin in the first place? He had to have known she was there, her being old and all. The extra stomach(s)
a good reminder he was an alien. Could have been written tighter.