U is for Uploading to Virtual Worlds

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

I love the idea of the singularity and being able to ‘upload’ a human brain and body from biological reality into a computer core that can run them better. I’ve been noodling on a notion that combines that with alien visitation…

So, an alien starship shows up and makes contact with Earth, but it’s really just a robot drone with a gigantic computer core. Inside the computer are billions of uploaded personality from millions of different species. They travel through the galaxy on their computer ship, effectively immortal, and able to ‘explore’ millions upon millions of virtual planets any time they want, some based on real worlds that the starship or similar ones have visited, some entirely made up.

The ship and its digital citizens want to spend a hundred years or so studying the Earth to add it to their library. If we’re interested, they also offer to upload anybody who wants the digital life and take them along. But a few people start to wonder if the aliens are really able to upload Earthlings without running into a few mistakes as they work out the process…

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

A is for Alien Abudction!

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas that I might write. If you’re interested enough to pick them up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

This ‘Alien Abduction’ idea is one that I had last fall and put aside in favor of Kitchen Scale:

An exhibitionist is taken prisoner and transported to a human exhibit in a ‘glass house zoo’ on Titan, where humans are expected to compete for treats in front of the eyes of aliens. At first, she loves the attention, then competes with some of the other humans to be the most popular. Struggling with homesickness, she decides she wants to go back home, and must convince the other humans to stage a ‘boredom protest’ that will convince the aliens to send them back to their natural habitat because they aren’t interesting to watch anymore.

Thanks for visiting!

Rewriting a story in four days.

I’ve been wanting to get back to talking about writing here on the blog, so here’s a good bit to blather on about, I think. Rewriting an incomplete story idea from scratch.

I’ve had the idea for this ‘alien landing’ story for going on a year now, I think – I did a starting paragraph for it based on a challenge at Stringing Words in October of 2009, (wow, didn’t realize it was that long until I looked it up,) and I started my first draft in May of this year. It was going pretty well – four scenes, 3200 words, and then it just kind of ran into the ground at the point that the alien attacked the human soldiers.

The basic premise, by the way, is that an alien ship lands on Earth, damaged from a battle with other aliens – they need help to fix the ship, but they’ve still got powerful weapons that can hold their own against anything the Army throws against them, so both sides are forced to bargain in the end.

I asked other writers for feedback on what I had so far – I read it for the Hamilton Writers’ group on June 1st, I think, and got some interesting perspectives, including how soldiers should talk in a much grittier and fouler fashion, and some encouragement, but I still wasn’t sure how to continue, and put it aside to focus on other things, like the CreateSpace draft of ‘The Long Way Home’, JulNoWrimo… and starting my blog.

In August, I submitted the two longer scenes in CritMo, and the crits that I got managed to perfectly clarify what I needed to go. Over and over again, they kept repeating, ‘I like Doctor Juddman, I like the alien, I like the language stuff, I don’t care about the two army commanders butting heads.’

So I did a page one rewrite, telling the entire story in Doctor Juddman’s point of view, how he was whisked out of his office at UBC to go talk to an alien, and what happened after the alien attacked him and held him captive for nearly 24 hours in his spaceship.

It’s still a rough draft at this point, 5400 words, but it’s a complete first draft, and I’m happy about it. Thinking about taking this one to Hamilton Writers this week, to see what they think of the difference.

Do any of you readers have a story to share about rewriting stories quickly?

And thank you very much for the awards, Brittany. I’ll talk more about those soon – hopefully Saturday.