Short fiction thread

Hi, all
On this forum there are a lot of people who write very well, yet never posted any fiction, either because they prefer to write poetry or because they simply never intended to write any literature at all.This trend is intended to work as a kind of short fiction lab, where anyone can post bits and pieces of stories and texts that are not necessarily finished and who would like the opinion of other Litnetters on the text.We could also include links about writing techniques which might help.
This thread is a sequel to the "Short story contest" thread:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...petition/page5
Let´s see if and how it works!

I'll try to have an updated version of my story ready this weekend. Or maybe write something new.

Great, Yes/No. I am thinking of a story too, but didn´t have the time to write it down yet.

The following chapters would be from Part 1: Georgette's World. They were two stories that originally appeared in a thread of 55 word stories which explains why they are thankfully so short.



Chapter N: Why Quantum Physicists Shouldn't Be Allowed to Take Their Work Home

Deep in his home laboratory, Dr. Roketscienski hesitated, "Should I push the button, prove that I'm right after all, and collapse the known universe?"

He heard the sweet sound of song birds, and then, "Get your butt up here and take out the garbage!"

He pushed the button.



Chapter N + 1: After the Experiment

Dr. Roketscienski figured something should have happened when he pressed the quantum eraser button. Why didn't the universal wave function collapse as he predicted? Why didn't the world end?

"What's going on down there?"

"Nothing, sugar."

"Are you trying to collapse the universe again?"

"No, sweetie."

LOL!I had a good laugh! It would be a prose equivalent of the Biggus poems and Lymerick.
Georgette I suppose is "sugar",also known as "sweetie".:lol:

Thanks, Danik. I had another character in mind called Martha, his wife, and Georgette was more of an onlooker with her own problems, but I may not get any further than Dr. Roketscienski does collapsing the universe. It is sort of like Biggus' poetry come to think of it.

There is still another day of the weekend. There's still time to write a real story.

Here are three more previously posted chapters from my future airport novel.



Chapter M: At the Roqetscienski's Backyard Party

"What's Robert telling those kids, Martha?"

By the swing set, they could hear Robert's voice rise, "...and then there was a BIG BANG!"

"Oh. He's telling them his version of the creation of the universe."

When the kids settled, he leaned in toward them and whispered, "And God said, 'Oops.'"



Chapter M + 1: Another Way the Universe Might Have Started

Kathy's six-year-old Billy sat by her. She whispered, "What was that crazy Dr. Roqetscientski telling you by the swing set?"

Billy shook his head and giggled.

"You can tell me."

Billy refused.

"Whisper it in my ear."

Billy spoke into her ear, "He said God pooped out the universe."



Chapter M + 2: Still Another Way the Universe Might Have Started

"Robert Roqetscienski told your son that God pooped out the universe."

"No! Even Robert's not that stupid. Billy probably misunderstood."

"You need to talk to your son." Kathy told her husband.

"Hell, I don't know how it started."

Before bed, Billy's father reasoned, "It might have been only a fart."

YesNo I constantly wish this forum had a "rep" function. I often want to laud someone's post but don't feel like interrupting the flow of a thread when I have nothing more substantial than agreement or praise to add.

For the above, I break that rule. Love the brevity. Love the whimsy. Hope you get to publication.

Thanks, spikepipsqueak! These are three posts from another thread where the stories were limited to 50 words each. They seemed to fit together and so I re-posted them here as one. I'm glad you liked them.

I am only inclined to tell this story, before I can no longer speak, because no one I have been rash enough to tell it to so far believes it. Right now, I’ll restrict myself to what is believable and that is simply that a puppy followed my neighbor pushing his way up the long path through the wild grass and tall red osiers that were not beaten down by my narrow, daily footsteps. He looked like a friendly dog although I cannot remember why I agreed to take him in.

His name was Fred. I let him sleep inside my cabin containing a hand pump for water, kerosene lamps for light and a wood stove on the edge of central Maine’s vast forest lands. On his first day Fred tore open the sealed food bag and stuffed himself with dog food until his stomach bloated. When he saw me refill his bowl he knew this was home. Eventually, Fred would earn the title of “bad dog”. I forgave him. I hope he forgave me. However, that gets into the unbelievable part that I’ve promised myself I must tell, but which I cannot tell, just yet, because I am trying to make it clear how cute Fred looked walking innocently through that tall grass.

WATER FLOWS DOWNHILL
FILLING STREAMS FROM MAPLE GROVES
AUTUMN LOSES WARMTH

The above is a "haibun": some prose and then an unrelated haiku at the end. The story is decades old and is true and this is just the first chapter. I am fantasizing that the full collection will be called "Chicken Story" and as you can guess there are also chickens involved.

Only when I saw the last post, I noticed that you ressurected the thread. The stories are funny and irreverent. If you opened a thread called "Dr. Roqetscientski" or similar more people would be able to view them.
About that last story. I liked the beginning because it awakens the curiosity of the reader.
It also gives off that the cute dog has a strong will of his own in regard to his feeding. But as chicken are also involved in the story I feel that tragedy is impending.
I never saw I "haibun" before. Is it a new form of writing?

Thanks, Danik! I heard about haibun only recently when reading poems on the dVerse site, but it is an old Japanese form going back to the late 17th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun

However, I prefer English common meter, such as "Mary had a little lamb", rather than haiku or the four line, five character Chinese Tang formal poetry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gushi_(poetry), because that is what I heard as a child, but I wrote that as a response to a writer's prompt on dVerse and the prompter required that it end with a haiku, and since I normally do what I am told to do, I wrote a haiku.

Interesting development. The oriental letters are in themselves sugestive of poetry, they are beautiful and in themselves synteses of meaning.

You probably know this book already
http://www.pantherwebworks.com/i_ching/

Today one can create almost whatever combination of style and gender one wants. I suppose there are not many fixed rules any more.
I think there is some relation from the haiku to the story. For me it points out subtly that the story isn´t going to end well.

I'm aware of the I Ching although I haven't studied it. The imagist approach to Chinese I suspect is a false start that began with Pound and Fenollosa: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/text...d_chinese.html

In the haibun, the haiku was supposed to be unrelated to the prose section, or so I understood, but I may have related them.

I wasn´t aware of this interesting discussion. I will have to go further into it. Anyway I don´t know Chinese or any other oriental language. It just seems to me that the ideograms are a poetic approach to language.
I believe in unconscious choices. They often happen in writing. Your haicu points to the coming winter (winter is sometimes viewed as a stern season, a season of scarcity, restraint and losses. And the story is just beginning.) But, of course, I may be reading too much into the story.