WIP-it Wednesday: December 9th, 2015

Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

As noted last week, I’ve had a lot going on and didn’t have too much time for fiction until Sunday rolled around this weekend. Saturday was a good day, however. It found me taking in an afternoon performance of The Nutcracker ballet and enjoying it with my wife and friends. In particular, the children’s choir they had this year did a beautiful job for Waltz of the Snowflakes which ended-up being my favorite part of the show.

From there we all traveled to a friend’s house and played some Pathfinder role-play! It was a fun session made better by my Yuletide gift of stout ale to the gamemaster who, having gotten a good buzz, unleashed some hilarious storytelling. ;-)

Last Friday my idea for the December Writing Challenge on the FantasyWriters subreddit was posted: Space Fantasy! The prompt this month is “write a story containing fantasy elements of 4,000 words or less where space and space travel are focal points within the plot” with the additional caveat that “At least once in your tale you must use a famous line from any Star Wars film.”

This is my first prompt to become a formal challenge, and I’m excited to see what will come of it! As with the November challenge, I’ll be recusing myself from the contest proper but will be writing something for fun, enjoyment and to share with the forum and those that follow my fiction on Aethereal Engines.

On Sunday I started what will hopefully become a cool bit of space opera fantasy. I’m calling it PRINCE OF THE STARS, the “10th chapter” of an epic serial that has nothing currently written before or after it! ;-) The story intentionally starts and ends in medias res. In the spirit of making the reader feel as if they are truly walking into the middle chapter of a serial, I’m opening the story with an epigraph in the style of an “opening crawl” from a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers serial… a technique also famously used at the start of each Star Wars film as well.

It also serves as a means to keep the reader from being completely lost as I get right into the action. As I found out on Sunday, these things are deceptively hard to write too! It took me several hours to get my 117 words to both sound right and do what I needed them to do. Would you keep reading after this?

Summoned by the loyal droid RB-1, Kensei Kenara and her four daughters have rescued Airell and his Orcanian friend Krok from imprisonment within the megaforest city of Cysaceae where they were held for crimes they did not commit.

Disclosing to Airell that Kenara is the last of the noble Manaurian Senshi thought exterminated for a generation, RB-1 stuns its grateful master by reveling that he is actually the lost prince and lone heir to the STELLAR EMPIRE.

Sworn to restore the interstellar peace the empire long provided, Kenara and her daughter-apprentices escort Prince Airell to his impounded starship even as the militaristic agents of the STAR UNION plot to capture him before he can join the Loyalists…

As should be clear by now, this story takes inspiration from the likes of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and of course the Star Wars Universe which is very dear to me. It’s also the first tale I’ve ever written featuring my childhood staples of zap-guns, spaceships and sassy robots! Throw-in a ton of characters and, heavens to murgatroyd… I’m having way too much fun with it! This is a story that the boy within me would like to see, and I’m writing it for him even though I’m hoping others will enjoy it too. I know that I have a certain young blog follower who is a talented writer herself, and she loves Star Wars at least as much as he does. So if you’re reading this, I hope you’ll enjoy it too. :-)

As I wrap-up this installment, I’ll also say that working on this story so far has reaffirmed to me that, as a writer, I should stop fighting my insanity and just embrace it. Case in point? Yesterday I was driving to work and found myself thinking about my sassy space robot “RB-1”. Now, it isn’t uncommon for me to mull-over my writing ideas while doing that because my drive to work takes almost an hour, but yesterday I was trying to figure out how this character sounded and how I could portray that voice in his dialogue.

Suddenly, I just started talking to myself, trying out voices for RB-1. If someone had been in the car with me or recording I’m sure it would have sounded pretty crazy! But the thing is I like making funny voices to entertain, so I just kept playing with it as I drove on the highway. And by goofing-off, an important thing happened.

On paper, I had imagined this droid as a stuffy, British butler type. A humanoid robot along the lines of C3PO in Star Wars. But slowly, as I passed traffic and talked to myself in the car, this accent began to drop away… replaced by a warbly drawled voice…

“ArrBeee-Onee,” it said from my mouth like a fusion of Pat Buttram and Slim Pickens, “speectaaculaar space robit’ at yer services, Mam.”

And that was that! I threw all my old ideas for the character out the window, because that voice had become the character of RB-1 in 60 seconds! I remembered and was inspired by the robot Old B.O.B. from the 1979 film The Black Hole, a character that Mr. Pickens had voiced. Everything changed, and before I pulled into my parking space at work RB-1 had gone from a humanoid robot butler to a beaten, floating cylinder of industrial sass and twang more like R2D2 and Old B.O.B. in form and function.

My story instantly got a great sidekick. And he’s still talking thanks to my playful insanity. ;-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!