As in the last workshop, we played some word association games to come up with a supply of words to use for inspiration, this time focusing on the highest level of world-building, that of the actual world (rather than culture, or the individual). Then we drew a bunch of those words out of the mix and used 3 or 5 of them as the inspiration for a short piece, building the world of the story with the details we’d drawn.

We did this exercise twice today.

For the first round, my words were: fossils, depth, age, strata, and erosion. Here is the paragraph I came up with:

The ancient river had done the work for us over the eons. By the time our crew arrived on the scene, the water had long ago moved on, leaving behind bits of bone peeking out from their rock encasings. They gleamed like fine china amongst the dusky patina of the cliffs. We marveled at how clearly this planet had notated its history; each layer in the rock, each age, had its own telltale tint of color, changes in the proportion of minerals over time adjusting the earthy palette.

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And for the second round, which dipped a tad into the cultural level of world-building: map-making, varied traits, new species. Here is the snippet born from that:

Being a biocartographer isn’t as easy as you might think, especially when you’re plunked down in a strange land not your own for the assignment. There are always new species popping up that need to be designated in spaces you’ve already filled, because heavens, it’s already diverse enough and you didn’t think the particular ecosystem could support another such-and-such. But lo and behold, it does. And subspecies! Egad, the trouble they cause. You mark out one area as inhabited by the blue-toed hornback, and then see another almost identical creature in the same place. Except this one has toes of a more purple hue. Is this just a exaggerated trait of the blue-toed hornback, or a separate branch of the family tree, so to speak? So then you have to halt everything to figure out that hiccup, putting you behind schedule. Again, since that happens fairly often. You can see why it takes years to accurately map even a small area.

Don’t even bring up migration, my blood pressure can’t handle it.

Today the Austin Writers Group had a workshop (first in a serirs of four) all about world-building – how to flesh out the world of your stories so that they take place in a living, breathing, dynamic world. This includes everything from plate tectonics to architecture to mythology to the weave of the local cloth, etc. There are levels and levels.

The exercise we worked on today was in creating a word garden, just to get ideas flowing and create a kind of snapshot of one specific part of that world. A place, or a scene. You’d start with one word, then for a few mintues write down any other word or phrase that came to mind off of that first. Then you cut them up into seperate cards, and draw a few. Choose 3 or 5 or however many (depending on how specific you want to be) and create a world or scene off of those words. We were then to write a paragraph or so about this new place.

My 5 words/phrases were: blazing sun, stone, horses, canyon, isolated.

And here is the paragraph I came up with:

The sun blazes down across the Outlands, heating the stones until the air above shimmers, mirage-like. The horses’ hooves strike sparks as they gallop down into the canyon. They know it’s their only hope of shade in this stark countryside. He watches from above, isolated and content, his rocky perch a brief shadow against the sun. He does this every year, when the wild horses come through – seeks them out, watches them. The older horses always guide the young ones along this same path, and he’s now worn a kind of seat into the rock, shifting his weight to keep limbs from sleeping, but never approaching closer. He knows he could catch them if he wanted to, tame them, break them; he has the skills. He would never. It is enough for him to simply know of their existence, and partake, however distantly, of a bit of their wildness and beauty. That memory, that knowledge keeps his soul afloat through the rest of the long year. It is his secret and his joy. It is also his deepest despair, for one day his masters will catch scent of his secret, and when they learn of the wild ones they will destroy them. Not kill them, no, but take them and turn them into sad mockeries of the beauty born of freedom. Make him do it, for harboring this treasure. The thought makes his chest ache. The sun beats down on his uncovered head, warning him of the hour, judging him for his future betrayal. He wants to explain that he’ll have no choice. But the sun isn’t interested in mercy today; it lowers itself to the horizon in exacting degrees. He sighs, fingering the stone collar on his neck, looking down on the horses now resting in the shade of the canyon walls. Their time is almost up.

This is the short story I wrote for the first round in the NYC Midnight Movie Making Madness Short Story Challenge. We got divided into groups, were given a genre and subject (in this case, Drama and ‘a going out of business sale’), and had a week to write a story fitting those constraints. Oh, and couldn’t go over 2500 words.

Here’s my effort:

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Perspective

 

I still don’t know how to explain that day properly. I left New York that morning as a top reporter on the politics beat, sent on a crap assignment I thought was completely wrong for me. An art sale, of all things. Who on earth cares about an art sale, anyway?

My editor tried to spin it like a normal gig. “What do you mean it’s not your area? It’s a sale: economics. That’s politics. And that’s your area.” The truth was this artist had requested me. Turns out she was famous in the art world and never gave interviews (except now, apparently), making this story irresistible to my editor.

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A new short story posted, check it out: Caden. Done for my creative writing class.

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When people talk about Caden, and they’re being nice, they say he is very direct and confident for someone his age. Which is true, if generous. If someone says something cheeky, challenging him, he never shies away from a confrontation. Not that he’s physically aggressive or belligerant, you understand. He is just so self-assured that, once involved in a verbal duel, he never gives in. This bothers some people. Admittedly, he is not always tactful. The filter that most people have between brain and mouth is just not present in Caden. On the other hand, there’s nothing false about him either – he just says it as he sees it.Caden’s stepfather was rather well-off, and so could afford to send him to the same private college where, as chance would have it, I had been awarded a full scholarship. We ended up in the same hall. My first encounter with him was when I was building a loft for my bed, and I hear this casual drawl from the doorway,

 

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