Back to it and Believability

Well a couple of months have gone by and I have managed to slack off in my posts here on the site. However I have remained faithful to my writing commitments during the past couple of months. I would also point out that writing is a process of time and effort. So it should not be surprising that I will take some time and dedicate myself to the purer forms of the craft. Still I found that I need this blog as an avenue for venting some of my thoughts on writing itself. This and a fire at the building I live in took me away from this blog.

So where were we... oh yes, writing. I have been working on a new story outline that involves genetic modifications in the future. With all the body modifications that are going on in people today, i.e. piercings, tattoos and the like, it seemed a good subject. The story does not directly connect to any of these things but builds on them to create an interesting theme.

In this new world people of worlds captured by the empirical galactic government, armed forces are taken and surgically altered to perform specific special duties. These duties would include jobs like assassinations and other tasks that would not be considered correct or desirable by "normal" people.

For example a person may have wings attached to their body that would allow them to glide down from a ship and sneak into an apartment to take out the person hiding there, thus preventing detection by conventional systems. Or maybe they would have special interfaces or computers grafted into their skulls to allow them to have certain abilities when needed. It is a far out premise, I will admit, but think of how far out going to the moon was just a few years before we did it. As with the world of fiction all things are possible, it is just a matter of making them seem believable.

Believability is one aspect of writing that is the most difficult to grasp at times. After all it is my world that I am creating why can't I just have things the way I want them. Well as a writer it is certainly possible to introduce new worlds and new concepts, but the average reader is only likely to believe a certain percentage of those things. Now if I incorporate some aspects of science into these things, it adds a certain credibility that was lacking.

So when you are preparing for your writing please be sure and do some research on new scientific theories that are out in the public eye. Take these new thoughts and try to incorporate them into your writing, they can add an air of believability to your stories.

That is it for today, good writing to you all.

Writing for Spring

Springtime approaches as doth the dawn.... Well maybe not with all that bravado, but spring is coming soon to an area near you. Normally most writers would say that this is great! Spring is a time to open the windows and allow a gentle cool breeze waft across your shoulders as you compose your writings. Spring also gives us a chance to observe nature from a first hand perspective. Personal observation is very important to the writing process. Unfortunately spring also allows us to go forth into the world and enjoy the scenery.

Why would this be bad? Well your writing totals will suffer because of this change of conditions. I have experienced this myself each year. I get this period when I forget to write at all and I get out of practice. My story I am working on will suffer from a change of my mood as I am writing.

Therefore I have decided to allow myself a spring hiatus of sort. I will go two full weeks without working on any writing. This will give me the chance to enjoy the great outdoors and still get my work done that I am currently writing. Is this the perfect solution? Doubtful, but it is one that I can follow. So in honor of spring give yourself a writing vacation for a couple of weeks, but then get back to it!

Have fun and enjoy the nice weather.

Roswell, A short story.

"Clear the deck down there we're coming in hot!" yelled Captain Raspin into the comm link to the base landing personnel, indicating the loss of control that we had over the ship.

Normally the Class III skimmers were the most dependable of all the ships in the fleet, but recent circumstances had forced us to emergency measures that had left us with de-orbit engines, decent flaps and main engines fully functional, but no braking engines in the craft.

Basically we were an unstoppable missile. With the flaps in full up position we had been able to slow our speed to sub-sound. But we were still coming in too hot for the small air strip that we had been able to commandeer at the last minute.

The Captain looked over to me with just a small bead of sweat forming on his aging forehead. He was definitely handling this better than our engineer who had locked himself in the aft section of the ship one hour earlier and had not been heard from since. As for me I had prepared myself earlier in the flight for the possibility that we were not going to make it. In fact I never would have believed that we would have been able to attempt a landing at all just a few short hours earlier.

"Identify your craft!" the ground station broadcast back to us in the plain band radio frequency that was reserved for emergency landings. It was ancient technology but it had proven itself to he dependable time after time.

"This is Earth Fleet 6785, Class III Skimmer. We have sustained extended damage and we are coming in hot. Repeat clear the decks or we will do some serious redecorating as we land!" The captain looked at me again, as if to seek some sort of conformation what he just said. All I could do was nod my head.

I pulled up the front and side screen views on my station and was looking for our escorts. Our scanners had been knocked out by the earlier combat so I could not detect them on the ships normal systems. But good old visual never failed me in these situations. Strange I could not spot them, it was standard procedure to launch some fighter class escort ships to aid incoming ships in distress. Perhaps they had not received our emergency data packet transfer. I was just about to say something to the captain when the audio came back from the strip.

"What the hell is an Earth fleet, not to mention a skimmer?" Broadcast the ground station. "Ernie, is this some sort of a joke?"

"Who is this?" Demanded the captain. He was clearly not amused by the joker running the communications station on the ground. "This is Captain Ben Raspin of Earth Fleet, code 985434, I repeat we are coming in hot, clear the landing strip."

"Again, I have no listing for any Earth Fleet. But we will assist with your landing as we can. Did your engine stall out? What is the status of your craft?" Asked the ground station radio person. "We don't have radar at this site yet so I have no idea where you are. But just follow the lights in and I will have a truck standing by to assist in any rescue we need to perform."

The captain looked at me with a very confused look on his face. His normal coolness had been placed on hold. "What the hell are they talking about Don?" He asked me.

"I don't know sir, but we have no escorts of any kind and our scanning systems are still down. The ship's remaining systems have identified the landing strip. It appears to be some sort of old style runway. I have nothing in the ships computers as to the location of any of these antique strips that are still operational. As for why they are waiting for the installation of an antique radar system is beyond any guess I have sir. I suspect that we may have stumbled on some sort of museum site, possibly automated."

I reviewed my screens for any hints but we were still outside of visual range. I could tell that it had been a long time since I had been back to Earth, by shock of the overall darkness of the planet. I had remembered a lot more structures being present. But the shock of the situation were most likely throwing my senses off some.

The captain put the front screen on the main screen and instructed the computer to make it's best attempt for landing. It was all or nothing on this landing and it was dark as well. Very dark, I thought as we were coming down.

The captain announced to prepare for emergency landing on the ships intercom system. Wherever our engineer was he at least deserved a warning of impact. If we were lucky we would have a very rough landing followed by a series of prayers to what ever deity the captain prayed to in his times of need. If we were not so lucky then perhaps the survival suits would leave us salvageable. Then there was the third option. I would rather not think about that option, so I leaned back into my chair and prepared for whatever came.

The ship began to shake is the computer attempted to maneuver the ship with its limited remaining control surfaces. The inertial dampeners failing during our final approach. Just how fast was unknown to us inside the ship. My counsel in front of me lit up with a full screen of shipboard alarms. It would have been better to have instructed it to show the remaining shipboard systems that were operational.

We had donned our survival suits as part of the normal operating procedures. Once sealed they would provide medical attention to any survivable wounds that we may sustain during the crash. They were the standard grey issue of the service. These suits were constructed of a one piece design that was self sealing and provide stasis protection until they were unsealed by a chief medical officer. To make room for the hardware the suits had been designed with large rounded head covers. The head piece had two big ovoid one way eye pieces, one over each eye. Looking at the captain in his suit I realized that the suits would look downright comical if not for the urgency of the situation. I had to think about what we would look like to untrained personnel. After all all three of us had been picked because of our dwarfism for this particular ship and mission.

The captain looked over my way and we wished each other good luck. Once the suits activated we would be in a state of suspended animation, inside of a darn near impenetrable suit, until we were released. Normally if the suits survived they would be recovered and we should be unlocked in a matter of hours.

The ships small frame began to shake more violently. I watched as the external sensors indicated external temperatures climbing. Our small ship would be unrecognizable except for the nano-aluminum covering that was a part of the new ships design. It was a special memory metal that was developed lately to assist in the war effort.

The ship retracted all the screens into the bulkheads as we continued to rocket towards our destination. It was strange that the computers had not picked up any of the standard drones on approach. But with our crew surviving a light drive jump so close to a black hole we were just lucky have survived this far. There were so many unknown possibilities in our last minute escape effort that it was hard to tell just what all had happened.

Before my survival suit activated I heard the captain starting to cry, then the silence and blackness that was stasis enveloped me.

***

July 2nd 1945, Rosewell, New Mexico.

"Sir I need to report a crash."

"Where and what plane, private?"

"In the desert outside the base sir. As for what plane, it is not any plane that I have ever seen sir."

"What do you mean, not a plane? What is it then, a weather balloon?"

"Not exactly sir, but that's not bad........"

The End

Just a little short story to liven up your days. Let me know what you think of it.

Roswell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

52,000 words and still writing

Well the National Novel Writing Month is drawing to an end. I am really happy with this years progress. I am currently over 52,000 words and I still have to finish the ending chapters for the story. I can see this novel going to 60,000 words easily on this one. I may have to draft a sequel as I have many unfinished stories running in the main novel.

Still I feel really great about the progress. After all isn't life just a series of unfinished stories?

I settled for three separate story lines in the book. I have two main characters and then six sub characters in the book. I lost count on smaller characters a week ago, but suffice to say that there are plenty of minor characters to keep the story moving along. I have three deaths in the novel and two main plots one of which includes the total destruction of the earth as we know it!

I won't spoil the end of the book, as I have not written it yet! But hopefully it will have the ending that a story like this deserves. Next comes the hard part. I will print it off and read through the story to see where it falls apart. Once I have the timelines fixed I will find the details that remain unfinished in the story and fix those as well. Hopefully by the end of January I will have a working novel to sell. We shall see how things turn out. I have also decided to post a series of short stories here and on my Deviant Art page as well.

When next we meet here on the site I hope to have a more informative article for your enjoyment. Keep on writing and have a great week!

-Allan

Location:Hiawatha, Iowa

NaNoWriMo Day Ten

Well I am entering day ten in the contest for the month of November. My novel is going rather well and I am ahead of schedule by 5 full days. I hope to maintain this lead but I may slip a bit as I have a couple of really busy days ahead of me next week.

Still I think that the worst of the story is behind me, the plot is going along and I have already killed off not one but two characters in my novel.

In this contest other people offer challenges to other writers, one of these challenges is to include in the story that a person was killed with a traveling shovel. I am not sure what that is but I am going to include it in my story. I figure that I can always edit it out later on.

But to keep you entertained I am including in this post the 1700 word story that my new novel is based on. Happy reading and be sure to let me know what you think:

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The Mists Short Story
By Allan Zieser



Preface:

This is a short story that I created as part of my participation in the Annual NaNoWriMO that is held every year. For those not failure with the event it involves writing a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days from start to finish. This event is open to all who wish to participate at no cost. It is a fun time if you get involved with your local writing group.

In the past had been creating novels off the top of my head without the benefits of using an outline. But this year I decided to create a basic story to work off of for the novel. I think that the main advantage of having a base story to work from is that you are more prepared for each days writing. Planning becomes more a mater of reading a paragraph or two and then adding in the additional details that are missing from the short story.

So after I finish writing the final novel I will offer it for sale here as well. If you like this story then I am sure that you will also like the novel. I envision that it will be significantly different in the details of the story, but the premise should remain intact.

For more information on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) please visit www.nanowrimo.org.



The Mists ( Short Story Version)

The mist rained down upon the mossy banks of the Monatumba river in western Plaintown. Of course it always was misting or raining or outright pouring down on Plaintown. In fact it had rained non-stop since the settlers arrived some twenty years ago. The Earth built terrabots were busily transforming the alien soil into land suitable for growing the Earth based foods that the settlers needed to survive.

Carla had been born in Plaintown since the arrival of the settlers and had never known a day without rain of some sorts. Still for all of the rain she remained a happy child. I guess it is fair to say that a person's attitude can be based on things other than the local weather and surroundings. Carla's attitude was based on her love for her parents and the other settlers as well. The pre-fabricated dwelling Carla and her family lived in had been created by people that Carla had never met on a world that she would, most likely, never know.

Life here had been really hard on her parents, after their arrival here on the rainy planet they had developed an illness that forced them to isolate themselves from their children. For some reason none of Carla's generation had been susceptible to this mysterious illness. Still the settlers remained in their habitat sealed off from the group, while Carla and the others performed daily chores. The children were able to communicate with their parents via radio and the computers in the habitats and vehicles.

When Carla and the other Children were old enough the parents suggested that they should move out of the settlement. It was explained that in this way the parents could resume there outdoor lives while the children would remain at a safe distance.

It was with a sad heart that Carla and the other children disconnected from their parents and ventured into the rainy world to start their own community.

After several days of moving along the river they came to a sheltered cove that had been pre-selected by the main site computers. Clara and the others took their bio-scanners and checked the surrounding areas for any signs of possibly harmful life. Having found none they set to work on their new group site.

Carla had decided before the journey that she would choose Mark as her living partner. Having been artificially birthed after the landing and raised by the robot nannies in the home colony all of the children were of the same age give or take a few days.

Mark had just reached his 19th anniversary day for his birth just a few days after Carla. Mark and Carla had been best friends since childhood and it just seemed natural to both of them that they should be together.

Carla and the other children had no concept of marriage, but their parents had taught them that they should choose of a partner to live with. These partnerships were logged on the community computer systems as they occurred. Carla and the others knew that it would be important biologically to have a good record system of who was currently partnered with who in there new community.

Carla had positioned the nano-assembler unit and started the tiny bugs to work at the task of creating shelters. The design that they were using had been created on their parents computers, several of which their group brought along. Carla and Mark, as well as the others had brought with them a complete copy of their parents site library. There would be plenty of time for reading and learning.

The main issue concerning the survival of the group was food. The earth foods they depended on currently only grew inside the protective shelters. Luckily the nano-assemblers their parents had brought with them were rather good at their assigned tasks as well. They dutifully continued to create more and more nano-units as they built out the walls of the structure. In this fashion the units were done within a week of starting.

Upon completion of the new habitat structure Carla and Mark moved into their own private rooms. Carla was glad to be leaving the temporary tents that they had been living in for the past week. The main habitat building that housed the individual rooms was circular with each room being built along the outside of the ring and a common area and lift system in the middle of the building. There were ten floors including the three that were underground housing the communications and computer gear.

One day Carla was awakened by an unusually bright light over the horizon. It came from the direction of their parents living units. Could this be the fabled sunlight that her parents had told them about? She thought not as it was gone in an instant. Carla tried several time to contact their parents at their site. With no answer from the communications array Carla decided to go back to the parents site and find out what had happened.

Mark and Carla loaded up some supplies from their gardens and headed back towards the site. As they approached their parents building site Carla could not see the familiar shapes of the buildings. Carla noted their location on the units navigation screen, according to the unit she was at the location of the site. But there were no lights cutting through the jungle.

Carla drove ahead a bit and came to a fast stop when she almost drove into a deep rounded crater in the ground that was devoid of all plant life. The navigation units sparked to life with warnings of low level radiation. She yelled at Mark to hold on as she put the unit into reverse and powered her way out of the crater.

With little choice Carla and Mark drove back to their new home site and relayed the video to the others. Apparently their parents could stand it no more and had decided to end their lives rather than risk giving the mysterious disease to their children.

On the way back to their camp Carla realized that they were now very much alone here on this world. The people back on her parents planet would not likely come to find them, as they would assume that they had all been killed in some sort of accident.

After several years had passed them by, Carla and Mark and some of the other new parents in their group decided that they should move out of the protection of their habitat. The terabots had been successful in there mission and a good amount of the local land was now useful for farming with certain hardy crops that liked the rain. The remaining crops they had been able to grow successfully indoors.

As the new little group of explorers were packing they looked through the clear steel window to the outside of the shelter. To Carla the world looked different from any day that she had seen so far in her life. She motioned to Mark to follow her outside so that they could see what was happening outside.

As Carla went outside she noticed a change in the sounds of her surroundings. At first she could not figure out just what was different about this mornings sounds. But the more she listened the more she realized that it was not the presence of a sound but rather a lack of one that had started her wondering. She could not hear the patter of rain on the leaves outside. As they went outside they realized that their skin did not have the normal dampness that it had had for the past many years. In fact the leaves were dry as well. As they headed out on the path towards their new homes the people of Carla and Marks generation and their families, witnessed the most beautiful thing that they had ever seen in their lives, their first sunrise.

Afterward:

Several years later the Earth ship Exodus entered the atmosphere of the third planet from the local sun. It drifted slowly towards a cerecrete structure and docked. Having made its last voyage the ship seemed to die as they shut it down. The inhabitants of the ship donned protective suits to defend against the local suns hard radiation. They entered the structure and descended several hundred meters into the planets crust. The group left the ship and checked in with the remainder of the human population entombed in this deep underground shelter.

"Please report." said the head of the lone remaining Earth government.

"Well your honor we are proud to say mission accomplished. The children of our planet were successfully transplanted onto their new home."

"Do they have any idea of what has transpired?"

"None, they think that we were victims of a mass suicide caused by depression from our "illness". We lifted off and detonated a small device that left just enough trace radiation to be believable."

"You are sure that they have sufficient knowledge to survive life on this new world?"

"As certain as we can be. They have learned to adapt to the new planet's environment. The localized rain that we were able to induce into the area, along with selective cultivation, has allowed the terraforming bots to do their jobs. They will not have it easy, but they will adapt and continue to evolve until they are the rightful heirs of their new world."

"So we may have saved humanity after all. Let us hope that they grow and do not make the same mistakes that ruined this world of ours. Goodbye dearest Earth, we will miss thee."

The End.



About the author

Allan Zieser has been writing on and off for several years, he is the author of the writing blog "Writing For Life" found at http://azieser.blogspot.com/ .

He currently lives in the small town of Hiawatha, Iowa with his computers and the internet.

One Day Till NaNoWriMo and Tech Thoughts

Well just one more day of sanity then the writing begins. I have a good supply of electrons to begin my journey this month. In the olden days I would have a pencil to sharpen and many pages of unreadable notes to look over and review. But we live in enlightened times.

Isn't that what they always used to say all the time. Now matter what time it was they were enlightened times. In all honesty I think that any time after the invention of writing can be declared enlightened times. After all are we really any better because of all our our fancy contraptions? I think that writing and reading should be considered the actual height of mans achievements.

But not to belittle the many other inventions we have created since yesteryear. Let us take a few minutes to review some of the finer things we have received because of our quest for modernization.

1. Ozone Hole! Truly the most impressive feat as of yet. We have actually broken the planet. Talk about your instant tan, just stand under that baby and you will glow.

2. Smog. Obviously we deemed fog to be so very cool that we now have it all the time in certain areas. After all we have fog in clubs, movies and many other areas where we need the mood to be just right.

3. Melting of the polar ice cap. Well we did need a bigger ocean to swim in didn't we? And quite frankly those giant ice sheets were not helping in our ability to build houses at all.

4. Oil Spills. Yes from the ancient times of drilling we have had a wonderful assortment of oil spills to add rainbows to our oceans. Some of these spills were advertised whilst others were not. But on the bright side the seals and ducks are now some of the richest animals on the planet!

5. Giant Garbage Island! We have a patch of garbage circulating in the Pacific ocean that is bigger than the state of Texas. Weeee Doggie! I think in the future we will find a way to build houses on this and it will become the next state!

6. Space Junk! Yes we got so bored with pollution here on the earth that we actually put many tons into orbit so that we can see it always! That junk in space will be mans legacy to any other beings that happen to wander over here in the distant future. Although some of will manage to makes it's way back home via gravity sometime in the future. "It's a bird, its a plane, its a toilet!!"

There that sums up my top 6 benefits of technology. Seriously though there are some really great accomplishments over the years in the health industry. There are many people that I know that are alive today because of advances in technology myself included.

Well sorry for the rant, but I hate to leave a thought untouched. Anyway wish me luck on my novel and remember when it comes to a story or a novel you must plan ahead. I have pre-planned my novel for this month and I am already feeling much better about it than I did my previous novel.

So have a good November and I will see you on the other side!

The usefulness of the internet and your writing

Today I was writing on one of my current stories that I am working on when I came upon an idea that the main character would need to build a lie detector.

So I immediately opened up my web browser and looked up "how lie detectors work." It offered a couple of good sites that I had used before. One of them was the "How things work" site. I gathered my information and was back to writing within minutes.

After I had finished I realized just what had happened. You see in the "Old Days" If I wanted to know how one of these things worked I would have headed out to the library or a book store to find out the information. So I would have gotten into my car and drove for a few minutes to the library.

Once inside I would have searched the dewey decimal system card catalog for the term lie detectors and providing that someone had written a book with that in the name I would have found some books to look at. I would then spend a couple of hours combing the books that turned up from my initial search and writing notes.

Provided that I was lucky enough to find the information and get my notes organized I could then head back home and get back to writing my story. Of course if I was not able to find the information then I may have had to find out who manufactured these devices or local people who used them and scheduled an interview with them. That would have taken many days or weeks to get it done and most likely would not have been feasible at all due to cost considerations.

So basically the action of searching the internet, that took only a couple of minutes replaced many, many hours of work. Now these dark days of yesteryear sound like a long time off, but it was actually only in the early 90's, so within the past twenty years.

Considering the vast amounts of money and time that this now common day to day activity saves, I have come to a conclusion. My conclusion is that we are writing in perhaps the best age that writers have ever experienced. Each day I am able to gather the information that I need for my job and my writing in just a couple of seconds. I am sure that a lot of people who are writing take the speed of finding information for granted. But I, having lived through these earlier "darker" times do not.

So as you go about your day to day information searches take time to think about the amount of work you are able to avoid just by using the internet. Have a great week and keep on writing.