Short Story – Generations
This week, I found myself writing about time travel. I like time travel because it’s weird. You could spend the entire story just trying to deal with the paradoxes. I find it more interesting to ignore the paradoxes and just tell the story.
The idea for this one started with the first several paragraphs about alternate timelines. I wasn’t totally sure how everything worked. I just kind of allowed that to develop.
More than most of the stories I’ve written lately, this one feels a lot like the prologue to something a great deal longer. Maybe I’ll revisit it someday. But probably not…
As always, please comment with your thoughts, share, or ignore! Whatever works for you!
Short Story – Delicate Negotiations
This week, my story started with the opening line. I mean, it always starts with the opening line. In this case, though, it was the entire genesis of the idea. I just started with a President in the oval office needing to go to do something important.
From there, I just thought about what might make for a very unusual day in the life of the President of the United States. And then I asked myself what it would be like if it wasn’t that unusual at all.
The end result is a slightly silly story about what happens when two different worlds intersect.
As always, I’d love to hear any feedback you might have. Thanks for reading!
Short Story – The Race
This week, I started with the idea of writing about a race. I didn’t know what kind of race it was. I just used the concept of racing as the seed.
I’ve been doing some public readings as a part of the Not So Silent Planet series in the Twin Cities and because that is a speculative fiction series, my thoughts have gravitated towards that genre. So the race became one taking place in space.
Several of my recent stories have trended pretty dark. This one actually bucks that trend.
As always, read, comment, share. These stories may be at mostly an exercise for me but it’s still nice to hear what people think – good or bad.
Short Story – Black Magic Beans
This week’s story started with the phrase “there are worse things than being poor.”
Typically, I haven’t worked with established stories or characters but when I started thinking about this one, I gravitated to Jack and the Beanstalk. So I went with it.
Mind you, this story takes us into a much more dangerous world than one with giants and singing harps.
As always, these stories are all about exercising my writing muscle every week. Please read, comment, share, and let me know what should change.
Short Story – Ducks in Space
A short story a week is my goal and that is the best explanation as to why I wrote what I’m posting today.
A few weeks ago, I was at an improv show and a suggestion was made (by my son) for the performers to act out a horror movie about ducks in space.
For whatever reason, I used “Ducks in Space” as the inspiration for this story. It is literally nothing like the improv sketch that inspired the title, which is probably for the best.
Instead, it is a story about what would most likely happen were ducks to pilot spacecraft.
Short Story – For All Time
Today’s short story was inspired by this news report of a mummified body discovered in a yacht adrift near the Philippines. I tried to think about what sort of events would lead up to such a discovery and wrote from there.
So this one is super dark. I had a good idea how it was going to end when I started writing.
A lot of my stories lately have been involved with meditations on immortality and the Faustian bargain that is likely to be part of anything that would allow someone to live an extraordinarily long life.
As with all of my writing, I tend to structure them in much the same way I would structure a script. In this case, I can really see this story turning into a radio play. The next step is probably to do that.
Please read, comment, share, or ignore! It’s your life – do what you will with it.
The Lease
Weekly short story post! This one is very short and began with thinking about ghosts and hauntings. I don’t believe ghosts are real but I really wish they were. If I was able to haunt people, I imagine I would do so in a way that is consistent with my current sense of humor.
That, in a nutshell, is where this story came from.
Time is On My Side
Time for my weekly short story post! I presented this at the Not-So-Silent Planet open mic last night. The requirement was for a story that is 5-7 minutes long and this is actually a bit on the long side. I actually think it needs to be longer.
The basic inspiration for the story was “what if time travel was super easy and there were no consequences?”
There are consequences, though. There are always consequences.
I’ve written some serious stories the last few weeks. This one is a lot more comedic. As always, if you read, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
The Wish List
Another in my short story writing series. I presented this one at Fearless Lab last night.
I had a different idea for the ending when I originally wrote the piece but I changed it for last night. I liked the original direction better so I changed the ending back to my original one. The theme for the show was leap year and that explains where the basic idea came from.
Anyway – if you like or don’t like, feedback is great. If you read the whole thing – thanks for reading!
The Sacrifice
I’ve just been exploring some different ideas and forms the last few weeks. I’m still percolating over my next script so I’m playing with short stories.
Because I’m a playwright, I find it very easy to write dialogue. Everything else is pretty tricky.
For the second week in a row, I’ve ended up writing something that isn’t comedy. Sometimes you have to just let the story happen and see where you end up.
The genesis of this story was the idea of a human sacrifice from the point of view of the sacrifice. I used the Mayan culture as a little bit of a springboard but this isn’t supposed to be a real place or a real-time.
Grail Diary 