 Fantasy: October 08, 2008 Issue [#2647] |
  Fantasy
This week: Edited by: shaara
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As your newest Fantasy editor, my goal is to challenge you to think outside the KNOWN and to help you inject your tales with fascinating facts while jagging left and right through troublesome frolics and teethe-writhing dilemmas.
Perhaps we can help each other to safely jog through these twisty turns of radical thought, alternate viewpoint, and dynamic detail. Come! Let’s head down the Path of Dimensions untextured by any earthly array.
In other words, let’s drop out of reality for awhile. Shall we?
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Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge." We at Writer’s Cramp certainly agree, especially here in the frothy land of the Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Is your mouth now puckering up with the sweetness of its flavor? Swallow and walk forward, or, better yet, fly by the puckered wings of the Lillylop who sprinkles those beneath us with shiny flakes of ennui.
Sh! Don’t speak.
If you bend over, you can peek inside my dwelling. Do you see my bulletin board of ideas? One glance is all it takes to break us through to where dragons roam and aliens smile. (I hope you brought a flashlight.)
Close your eyes now.
It’s too late to flit away – back to solidity. You’re committed . . .
Rainbows shimmer.
Antennae dip to honor us.
We slide down the ripples of space and time.
Finally . . .
we’re dancing inside the secrets
of other worlds.
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Today’s episode of the Fantasy Newsletter is my official launch into editing. I shall continue once a month to update you on the crazy thoughts inside my head, to share with you the wonderful stories I see in Writing.com that are either fantasy or science fiction, and to educate you (or at least -- attempt not to bore you) about writing in a theoretical what-if world.
What if . . .? That is the core element, of course.
What if Martians attacked?
What if aliens were friendly?
What if a green dragon suddenly popped out of his shell and rocked your world forevermore?
What if your toaster started to lecture you about the kind of bread you were poking into its heating element?
How would each of these changes alter your environment, your decisions, and your daily intercourse with the rest of humanity?
Long ago I read a book about the origins of Star Trek props. I’m afraid that it was too many years ago to recall the author or even the title, but the memory that lingers is that the dining room onboard the Enterprise needed a salt and pepper shaker.
The people in charge of finding such things searched through obscure shops. Picture this team of trophy hunters eyeing rows of decorative crystals, bronzed statutes, china shapes of animals and princesses. . . Which one would work? Which shaker looked futuristic enough? Which pair would be novel enough to belong on the Enterprise ?
Then they found it -- the perfect set. Futuristic. Brazen. Unorthodox. Definitely not your average salt and pepper shaker. Success!
Yet, once the items were brought back to the studio, no one recognized them for what they were intended to be. Heads were scratched. Brows wrinkled. People squinted their eyes and then stared. The new shakers just would not work. They were too bizarre, too odd-looking.
End of story? Not at all. The prop people stared down at the items in their hands. They turned them over and over. They stared. They glared. They wrinkled up their noses.
And then . . . they turned the strange-looking salt and pepper shakers into Bone’s medical tools.
Thus, whenever you see the Star Trek doctor of the old series scanning a crewman’s body, you can ponder whether a pepper shaker truly would make a better diagnostic instrument than a Pet Scan.
But, why am I telling you this? What does it have to do with a Fantasy/ Science Fiction Newsletter?
You, see -- this story long ago modified my thinking. (No, I won’t tell you how many years ago. You’d know how ancient I am then. LOL)
But my point is, that science fiction and fantasy stories are often flavored by odd items – items so bizarre that their storyline loses its “understandability.” We must think of those salt and pepper shakers each time we write our story – regardless of whether that story is set in a world of elves 20,000 years in the future. We must ask ourselves: will the props, the variations, the unique scientific inventions, and all the creative adaptations to that world – will they still be recognizable? Will they make a connection back to the world we understand.
Too many weirdnesses lose a reader’s attention. Therefore, an author must walk the acrobat’s tightrope with eyes on the story but the knowledge that down below are readers who may not be able to see an outrageous salt and pepper shaker for what it really is.
A child who doesn’t understand enough words in a passage will not be able to read it with comprehension. How many foreign concepts, words, and alien ideas can we throw at our reader before he loses comprehension? Please toss your thoughts to me. I am curious about your comments.
Bye for now. See you next month,
Smiles always,
S h a a r a
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While tiptoeing through the fields of what if,
I spied the following fascinating pieces:
What if the one you loved had completely disappeared from her physical body?
What if you heard the banshee, and he hadn’t come for the person you thought he was there for?
What if you were a bird-like creature, ejected from your mother’s nest . . . | |  | Invalid Item
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What if an alien were the psychiatrist? | | | Invalid Item
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What if your shipmate were genderless . . . for now? | | | Invalid Item
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What if you must write a sci-fi story in 300 words or fewer; could you do it? | | | Invalid Item
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CHALLENGE:
For this month, I ask you to write a what if story on the following idea:
What if there were no units of time, a concept I personally back-pedaled with for several chapters of a book I was working on before drowning in it and rewriting all that had occurred. I couldn’t make the concept work. Can you?
Remember -- no divisions of time: Is your character on a world where fog prevents the citizens’ awareness of the sun’s passing? Is your character onboard a ship off a world with no time constraints? (Then how does a person know when to report to work? How does he know when to plant crops?)
This is a big challenge. Please keep your story short -- let's say under 1,500 and show me how YOU work around this problem.
Please e-mail your story to me using the bitem format.
Post the word count.
Put at the top: Imagination is more important than knowledge (Einstein) so I'll know it's for this contest.
In exchange:
I promise to give all these time stories a review and to post my favorites in my next Fantasy Newsletter.
Until next month . . .
dream a little world for me
and remember always
that imagination is the conduit.
Smiles always,
S h a a r a
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