1) Write a story triggered by, and plotted around these "pets". (The site is a detailed trigger.) Any story length (from 500 - 10,000 words) is an acceptible entry. Any Genre is acceptible. (Feel free to change the comapny name, or the description of the "pets".)

2) Skadder's idea will truly make this a challenge, so rule number two is: The first 13 lines can be only character and prose--a single reference to setting would be allowed.

3) For kickers, Bruce Holland Rogers's method of coming up with original stories is to write down the first 20 ideas that come to mind an scrap them. He says those 1st ideas are most likely to be had by others. Since--over the course of a few challenges--I have seen similarities in ideas, you must include (though, not necessarily part of the story) (amended to 10) scratched-out ideas. (A sentence long is sufficent.)

If you choose to accept, say so in this thread. The challenge will begin Friday 10/10 and end on Halloween Night (10/31). Who has the courage to head into NaNoWrMo fresh from a warm-up competition like this?

[Edited to fix the offending "h"]

[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited October 08, 2008).]

Any other month, and I would have given it a shot.

quote:

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I would have been up for a 13 line challenge, but not a complete story competition. I have too many stories on the go at present.

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That's why the whole: Any story length (from 500 - 10,000 words) is an acceptible entry. <--that's roughly anywhere between 2 pages to 40.

Unwritten:

quote:

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I usually shy away from writing anything that feels creepy, and this definately feels creepy.

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It's only as creepy as you want it to be.

I haven't heard back from Zero, yet (my impartial tally-er) on the experiment. As Soon as I do, I will announce the experiment's results in a separate thread.

Congratulations, Unwritten.

1. I am rather busy up until the election is over with. Luckily, this is very soon.

And,

God/Biblical/Occult:
[God himself is angry and intervenes.]
[Witch-invented Soul Collectors]
[Religious activists try to kill the inventor]

Sinister:
[GenPet facility is actually a front for a plot to bioengineer humans]
[The way to make GenPets is stolen by a terrorist organization]
[GenPets are being controlled by microchip implanted in their brain by devious corporation trying to take over the world.]
[Grow your own Assassins]
[Government Spies (like Nanny Cams, but living)]
[They change your DNA to replenish their stock]
[Weapons of Mass Destruction]
[Murderous Pinocchios]

Scientific Exploration:
[Gen pet is owned by a pharmacist and it drinks something that unlocks part of its DNA that the designers thought was irrelevant.]
[Genpet goes to mars and multiplies eating through the dome material-hmmm, Star Trek?]
[DNA Programmable Spare Parts]

Alien/Extra-Terrestrial:
[GenPets are really creatures from outer space]
[They are not really genetically manipulated—they are really aliens]
[GenPet becomes mysteriously sick, owner takes it to the vet.  Soon other animals begin showing illness. Owner discovers GenPet is spreading an animal zombie virus that was planted by aliens.]
[GenPets are actually superintelligent aliens that were sent to Earth to take over the planet. However, this GenPet has second thoughts and helps to save mankind.]
[Clever Alien Invasion]

Human Interest:
[- Girl got a genpet for her birthday last year, is devestated when it dies on her next birthday; parents try to be sympathetic but don't understand(its just a broken toy, we'll get you another)]
[- Kid neglects genpet, its almost dead, and the company help-line leaves the desparate parents on hold]
[- Police arrest someone for genpet abuse/neglect, sends genpet to foster home]
[- GenPet confused with a preemie baby--lots of what-if's]
[Black market genpets: advanced model that simulates human baby]
[- Dysfunctional personality]
[- GenPets given as gifts to each of a group of children; expiration/monitors are defective, and they are all dead. The children think they are dolls and play with them while parents are aghast, imagining decomposition (maybe some of them already have a rank odor).]
[- Warehouse-style orphanage for abandoned and abused/neglected genpets. Worker is constantly on the look-out for the one she bonded with but lost. She knows she will recognize it because genpets always perk up around their owners (due to bonding). They are all so depressed; no one ever adopts them
because they can't bond again. Sheesh, this one sounds literary! Stretch a little further--she finds her genpet and it dies; its three years are up. She quits her job and buys a new one?]
[- Genpets' emotional comfort as a kind of addiction. An empty person buys lots of them to have all that adoration ready-made. He hires a service that cares for them and culls the ones about to die, to avoid any unpleasantness.]
[Religious activists try to kill the inventor]
[Old lady gets given a genpet (she is losing her marbles) by son and accidentally cooks it for supper.]
[(POV genpet) Genpet (test version) is allowed to walk around lab. Its very intelligent but can't express itself. Works on its own project a night in order to free its people. A joke on the biblical story of Moses escaping from Egypt. It creates all the plagues (or versions of them).]
[GenPet have been bioengineered with human DNA.  Owner discovers his own dead child was one of the "donors" and now the animal is displaying latent memories and understanding but is having difficulty communicating.]
[PETA fights GenPet corporation all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Court decides in favor of GenPet and that the Second Amendment also applies to vacuum-sealed boxes.]

Philosophy:
[- Factory worker questioning the ethics of his job as he puts genpets into statis/sleep and hooks them up to their packaging monitors]

Findings:

Mrs. Brown is
75% (largely) interested in human-interest angle, with a 25% (mild) interest in the catastrophe angle

Unwritten is:
90% (enormously) interested in catastrophe stories, especially relating to unexpected trouble of epic proportions, sinister plots, and/or acts of external entities such as aliens and Gods. She also has a 10% interest in the "human interest" angle, provided it is a human issue relating to a catostrophic event.

Skadder is:
40% (strongly) interested in Scientific Exploration and furthing possibilities, and 40% interested in human introspection and interest, with a slight (10%) interest in catastrophe/apparent catastrophe.

Philocinema is:
20% (moderately) interested in alien/extra-terrestrial themed stories, with a strong (60%) bias toward catastrophe fiction, and the remaineder interested in sinister plots and a dash of human interest.

IB is:
60% (very strongly) interested in sinister plots, and somewhat interested in catastrophes, with trace interests in the occult and aliens.

Note:
The categories are rather vague and arbitrary and the analysis is hugely uncontrolled, since it's 100% qualitative, however, I found that the overarching desire was to have stories themed in crisis and catastrophe, and the need to adapt and improvise to these rapid, malintentioned developments.

Those were my discarded ideas. The idea I actually used was more of a human interest type story. I think I had so many catastrophe ideas because they are easy, and I was doing it as quickly as possible. I'm sure it's not because I am obsessed with catastrophe, although you'd never know if you could look at my life--At the moment, I'm waiting for the police to show up, because my darling 5 year old walked in the door from school and called 911 to tell them our house was not on fire. Yeah, this is the same daughter who got run over by a truck last week.

What I was wondering was actually how many plots are basically the same. It was supposed to be a less personal type of experiment—shouldn't have mattered who wrote the plots, but which were the most common, and how many out of those entries were original. (Remeber, it's supposed to be 20 ideas, so more could have crossed over.)

Here's what I see, how about you others? Out of 6 participants (or 51/2):

Aspirit is:
80% lazy.

I wrote down 10 concepts (not all were ideas) on October 10 and didn't expand them any of them into a story. I hadn't kept up with the posts, so I assumed we were to submit the unused ideas only if we submitted a story. Oops.

My first three concepts were the most simple and common. I'm not sure that the other concepts/ideas were unique, though they don’t all match with the challenge entries.