This is a Drabble, microfiction. Precisely one hundred words long, it has to tell a story.
I don't know whether this one works entirely but here it is - Silver Machine -
John_O
Points of light on the screen, a perfect spiral, the bots had found him.
He pressed the red button, nothing.
Beads of sweat forming on his brow.
“Shit. Busted.”
A low note, the bots had overlapping fire arcs, no escape now.
He tossed the silver cube into a battered ammo box, slammed the lid.
A bleeping, bots were nearing firing range, e-freakin’ficient bots.
His hand on the worn wooden handle.
The bleeping stopped, optimum firing range.
“Bye.”
A blinding light, the bots crumpled.
He raised the black visor.
“EMP.” He laughed, and began to sing. “I’ve got a silver machine….”
|
Hello...
Written by stevetroster (1588 comments posted) 29th June 2007 | ...would you like a review?
Micro-fiction aye! A flash way of saying 100 word fiction, but I must admit that micro-fiction has a certain ring to it, especially when it’s a Sci-fi piece.
Does it work as a story?? Well it certainly works as a snapshot, the storyline is quite clear, However I don’t know if Dave, Nik, Lemmy and the rest of the crew would approve, a bit too much like Matrix to be psychedelic rock .
I feel that as well as the story being a snapshot, that a lot of the narrative is delivered in snapshot format as well, and that some of it could be tidier and tighter.
You were short of available words yet used many of them many times, e.g.
A bleeping, bots were nearing firing range, e-freakin’ficient bots.
His hand on the worn wooden handle.
The bleeping stopped, optimum firing range.
Bots - firing range - bots - firing range. And sorry, I couldn’t get my head around a worn wooden handle on a ‘silver machine’.
The points of light formed a perfect spiral on the screen, the bots had found him.
Beads of sweat formed on his brow as he pressed the red button, nothing.
“Shit! Busted!!”
A low note sounded, the bots had overlapping fire arcs, no escape now.
He tossed the silver cube into the battered ammo box, slamming the lid.
Bleeping commenced, they were nearing firing range, e-freakin’ficient bots.
The bleeping stopped, optimum range, he pushed the blue button.
“Bye.”
A blinding light, the bots crumpled.
“EMP.” He laughed, raised his black visor and began to sing. “I’ve got a silver machine….”
Only my opinion of course, which you can choose to ignore if you wish to.
Best wishes.
Steve.
| Nearly there
Written by John_O (148 comments posted) 2nd July 2007 | Hi Steve
you pretty much got the plot but here's the bit that didn't work.
The guy wants to listen to a song while he is luring the bots in, but his player is dead - thats the red button - but you are all suposed to think that he is now up the creek. So he lobs the player into the ammo box to protect it from the EMP in the hope that he can fix it later. Now the old wooden handle is really where I wasn't happy. Its the plunger on the EMP bomb trigger but I wanted it to seem like the grip of a gun he might be carrying, last desperate fight thing, but I didn't want to use the word 'grip'....
Like I said I wasn't sure it worked.
Of course the song he wanted to listen to was Silver Machine, and I think Lemmy would approve of blowing things up, albeit at the microprocessor level.
Thanks for the feedback. I may revisit this territory (Drabbles) but now I've blown the plot, this ones busted.
John_O |
Only registered users can rate and write comments.
Please login or register. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
Previous item
