“Dev! What the hell happened to Runkin?” Alara said as she ripped the clipboard off the nail it hung from below the rat’s cage. “Did you change his dosage?” The log showed no abnormal adjustment to the experiment, yet all that appeared left of RA-UNKN-C14 was a ball of matted fur in the back corner of the cage. “Dev! Runkin has had some form of fatal reaction to UNPL-374!” She picked up a glass stirring rod from the lab table and poked at the remains, but instead of a rodent’s body, she found a hard oval mass. “It appears he suffered some form of liquefaction!” Then it moved. It was enough to cause Alara to jump and crash into the table.
posted
The fragment versions have consistently incrementally strengthened and clarified and the third for me is most of the way to full realization. For me, still missing are motivations and stakes development.
Motivations, both private to Alara and public, so to speak, to mean larger-than-life in the sense of relevant to readers, could be developed by a few words mostly around what the study intends to learn or create. What is the purpose of the study?
Rat dosage trials often involve testing for chemical effects, like lethal dose 50, or the dose per body weight that kills fifty percent of recipients. Or similar, like side effects or wanted medical alterations, say that lower pulse rate, etc.
An insertion point for something of the nature, to me, comes before the first line, the dialogue start. The detail could be given as a thought of Alara's. Maybe something to the effect of //Overdosed rats, Alara thought, only a few dead today. Easier on the test subject budget. "Oh, Dev! What the hell happened to Runkin?"//
That above implies private and public monetary cost stakes and private and public motivation, implies the point of the study is something like lethal dose trials -- what Alara privately and for public consumption wants to study. Then the dialogue (monologue really) has context and texture (motivations and stakes) for its emotional charge too.
Though, for intensity's sake, higher stakes could be more appealing. That stakes' illustration is a riches and rags conflict. Not very much magnitude to speak of, though maybe enough for a novel opening.
On the other hand, higher magnitude stakes could imply another conflict, say life and death for Alara -- not just the rats. Conflict is a diametric opposition of forces, success and failure, etc., that need only be implied and even only one polarity needed to do so. Say, that the study tests a cure for an affliction Alara has. Cancer maybe. Maybe something viral or bacterial, like an antibacterial-resistant bacteria strain. Or a virus amenable to treatment by a medical magic bullet. Just wild blue-sky projections there.
What are Alara's private motivations and stakes and possible public stakes therein?
I think if a piece of those is known and portrayed in the fragment one need of openings is truly fully realized: What does Alara privately want?
posted
You can probably scratch 'said as' from the second sentence. I find myself a little less emotionally invested in this fragment than I would like, although I can't really put a finger on why. Even so, I would read on for at least a page or two.
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