Yes, this is the tension I saw in the original. And now to slowly reveal whether it’s a hoax, or a real supernatural event, but through letting the characters discover it for themselves.
Beautiful. Sets it up almost exactly as I had envisioned the backstory: a scientist whose wife had passed away, and was now buried in his work in denial.
The problem is that four of the characters are already there, but three are anonymous, since I started with only Kevin in the first bit to keep the dialog moving. So I was using this piece to give them names… and yes, after a re-reading I see that it confuses more than it expands.
I’m thinking there’s a sequel or two, although it’d be interesting to sit back and see where others take it first. I got the idea in the shower this morning, germinating from “what if ‘expected error’ was really some quantum effect trying to tell us something?”. But for ease of storytelling, I decided to take it supernatural instead of supertechnical.
A sequel? I hit the 1024 char mark pretty fast, but luckily I got the conflict in there. :) It does sorta beg for at least one or two more ficlets before it gets interesting.
Yeah, so far, I’m writing very immediate stories, because I’m trying to develop a sense of narrative style. I already have the fiction down… I mean, I write technical books for a living. :)
Not to give away my secrets too much, but the final line was actually what my real-life editor said when I pointed him at the first two segments. :) So I had to write the next piece, incorporating that. Gotta take your inspiration from wherever it comes!
I enjoy that it took my piece in a totally unexpected direction from the one in my head. Since this was my first ficlet, it’s a great experiment. Thank you!
I’ve been a professional technical writer for three decades, having written 250 magazine articles and contributed to a dozen best-selling books under my own name, and a shelf-full of books as writer-for-hire before that. (You might know me as “Just another Perl hacker”.)
But I’ve read (and watched) a lot of SF over the years, and have a few stories inside me to tell. Having been a guest at Dragon*Con the past few years, I’ve bumped into other authors and been encouraged to try my hand at the slightly-more-fictional technical writing. In preparation for that, I’m posting little snippets here to get feedback and practice at shifting from my own comfortable book/column style to the slightly less familiar narrative style.
FEEDBACK IS MOST WELCOME, and very appreciated. Please be brutal.
Favorite author
James P Hogan seems to have the style I can most easily approach
On Error, Error:
posted 10 months ago
On Pouring Out What's Left:
posted 10 months ago
On John and Ray:
posted 10 months ago
On A Digital Cry for Help:
posted 10 months ago
On Not quite an error:
posted 10 months ago
On Buffalo Central Terminal:
posted about 1 year ago
On Searching For Junk:
posted about 1 year ago
On Caring is our business... :
posted about 1 year ago
On Another long travel day:
posted about 1 year ago
On Where Is Mary Gone:
posted about 1 year ago
On Powerful Mistakes:
posted about 1 year ago
On Language Wars at the Ravens Gate Pool:
posted about 1 year ago
On three beers before ficlet:
posted about 1 year ago
On dead lines:
posted about 1 year ago
On The realization:
posted about 1 year ago