# Blast Off - 465 Words



## sailorguitar (May 5, 2016)

*6:30 am, mid-November, 2184*

I left my apartment bag in hand. Stepping out of the building, the sky drooped down around me, heavy and grey it was on my head and body like it responded to me, like it was waiting. 

Buildings towered up as gleaming sentinels in the grim moonlight reflecting the blue grey gloom as if standards for something better as I carried myself heavily down the street, head down and marching to my own weary tune.  The cement at my feet lay slippery and wet.  Taxis on my right, left, hovers bleating everywhere, blaring their sound, the company a cacophony; lights reflecting like jazz; dizzy in their early morning prism in this twenty-four hour city. The sun peeked an eye above the horizon, hinting at her rising. 

Down the street, a blinking red neon glances off the oily pavement like a warning.  A meeting. 

“Steak and eggs Phil?” Bob, an asshole, wants to send me to Mk i623 (C4) K185 A.34.f, a fucked planet in the Forgotten Belt that’s surrounded by unpredictable asteroids and populated by weirdos.

“Yeah. Medium Rare. Over easy. You paying?”  I looked up, tried to get his eye, stirred my coffee and watched the cream eddy like a gathering storm. 

Bob didn't answer, his eyes followed the swaying hips of a passing female Fnrothwgza.  

I put my bag on the floor, under the booth.

“You like blood Phil?”  Bob cocks his head, arches a dark eyebrow and looks at me like he’s teaching a 4th grade history class to a 1st grader and can’t wait to turn them into a kindergartner.  He’s waiting for the wrong answer. He’s fit, but wearing a tight brown blazer, matching pants, a salmon colored shirt with a blue tie, and white patent leather shoes with fake gold buckles strapped over the top.  Can’t imagine what his taste in women is.  Well actually, I can. That’s another story… He’s 40, 50, something like that, can't tell. I got the answer right though and his wife and I occasionally meet for pizza.  

“I want a job Bob. Just give me the papers. I don’t care about blood.  I want a shot. Waitress!!” I throw a finger in the air and wave it around in circles. 

“Phil it’s 6:30 am.  What are you doing?” He opens up his eyes at me, an open look full of teeth and puffy cheeks and the whites of his eyes, his mouth hangs a bit as his face expands, lips on the verge of  the trembles.  Like what am I doing? I can't remember all of it, but I think he threw his hands up in the air too.  Sorry bastard.

“It’s 7. C’mon Bob, you want to play this game? Give me the papers, I want to move on this job and get it behind me.”  I say. Then I say it again.  

The waitress brings a bourbon and I shoot it down.  

I sign the papers and I’m off. 

No more sun, no  more morning, no more earth, no more bourbon, no more Phil for a few years.

 My bag will stay with me though.


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## Tealynn (May 5, 2016)

"I left my apartment bag in hand. This first sentence confused me, I thought there was an “apartment bag.”  Clarify – my bag gripped firmly in hand… Stepping out of the building, the sky drooped down around me, heavy and grey it was on my head and body like it responded to me, like it was waiting. This seems too long, maybe two sentences?

Buildings towered up as gleaming sentinels in the grim moonlight reflecting the blue grey gloom as if standards for something better as I carried myself heavily down the street, head down and marching to my own weary tune. Too long. The cement at my feet lay slippery and wet. Taxis on my right, left, hovers bleating everywhere, blaring their sound, the company a cacophony; lights reflecting like jazz; dizzy in their early morning prism in this twenty-four hour city. Too long. The sun peeked an eye above the horizon, hinting at her rising. 

Down the street, a blinking red neon glances off the oily pavement like a warning. A meeting. ?

“Yeah. Medium rare. Over easy. You paying?” I looked up, tried to get his eye, stirred my coffee and watched the cream eddy like a gathering storm. Love the visual! 

“You like blood, Phil?” Bob cocks his head, arches a dark eyebrow and looks at me like _he’s teaching a 4th grade history class to a 1st grader and can’t wait to turn them into a kindergartner._ This one loses me, sorry. 

“I want a job, Bob. 

“Phil, it’s 6:30 am. Would seem more natural to say “in the morning!” 

“It’s 7. C’mon Bob, you want to play this game? Give me the papers. I want to move on this job and get it behind me.” I say. Then I say it again. Say it again"

I'm really liking your MC! Love the attitude that comes through loud and clear. Am interested to read more! Thanks!


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## bdcharles (May 5, 2016)

Very cool piece! You have some very nice phrasings here, and a really tight, attitude-rich voice on the MC, and the universe you've built sounds pretty neat too. I'm expecting stories told by bitter men of attack ships, off the shoulder of Orion.

I did wonder exactly what was happening. So Phil gets a job from Bob, but what's the job? Who are these guys? What makes this exchange of contracts different from every other? Or is it an extract from something bigger (sort of hoping it is...)

There were a few stylistic wobbles, most of which Tealynn pointed out. A couple that threw me were:

Buildings towered  up *as *gleaming sentinels in the grim moonlight reflecting the blue grey  gloom *as *if standards for something better *as *I carried myself heavily  down the street, head down and marching to my own weary tune. 

3 x as in one sentence? That sentence has some great contrasts and imagery bretween the tall towers and the trudging man but the word "as" is like salt, or sand. It gets everywhere and by the time you realise it, it's already gummed up the engine. Try this (incl what I think you mean by "standards for something better"):

Buildings towered  up, gleaming sentinels in the grim moonlight reflecting the blue-grey  gloom like signifiers of something better, a more glamourous world. I carried myself heavily  down the street, head down, marching to my own weary tune. 

This:
"That’s another story…"
- why the ellipsis?

He opens up his eyes at me, an open look full of teeth and puffy cheeks and the whites of his eyes
- repetition of both open and eyes. I wanted to read:
He opens up his eyes at me, a guileless look full of teeth and puffy cheeks and opalescent whites.

Umm, that's pretty much it. Nice going! 

^ Oh, that reminds me - including a smiley in your work is a bold step. I kind of like it.


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## sailorguitar (May 5, 2016)

I appreciate the comments,  feedback and criticisms.  I posted a re-write of this that is much longer and tries to address some of the comments and questions here.  Thanks again.


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## M.R Steiner (Dec 18, 2016)

okay, I never thought I'd read the sci-fi version of 'the sweet smell of success' meets slice of life working man's trouble, but this was a pleasant surprise none the less. as stated, the opening line was a little confusing. but it almost felt it like it was preparing you what came ahead, distracting to a casual, intriguing to some others, maybe those weirdos on the asteroid ?  

overall I enjoyed it, but for a set of reasons that maybe most other people shall not. 

good job either way


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## watermark (Jan 29, 2017)

Hi. I like the bag imagery. Wonder what's in it. XD
It's interesting you have it set in a diner, which adds some additional imagery to the dialogue.

I'm sure you probably explain it in other passages, but just by reading this passage it's difficult to tell what job Phil's signing up for. Is he a miner? What does blood have to do with it? The dialogue between Phil and Bob does not make much sense because of lost context.



sailorguitar said:


> “Phil it’s 6:30 am. What are you doing?” He opens up his eyes at me, an open look full of teeth and puffy cheeks and the whites of his eyes, his mouth hangs a bit as his face expands, lips on the verge of the trembles. Like what am I doing? I can't remember all of it, but I think he threw his hands up in the air too. Sorry bastard.
> 
> “It’s 7. C’mon Bob, you want to play this game? Give me the papers, I want to move on this job and get it behind me.” I say. Then I say it again.
> 
> The waitress brings a bourbon and I shoot it down.


This part is a little confusing. Did half an hour pass? And Phil is so drunk so he doesn't notice the time passed? Or did Bob report the wrong time? Is the time important?


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## sailorguitar (Jan 30, 2017)

Thanks.  I haven't looked at this in a while.  I will have to go back and look over it and re-write it.  Thanks for responding.  I think Phil has to go back to a long, crappy job in some far off corner of the universe and he's meeting Bob to sign the contract. And he's having a few drinks before the long trip out to the Forgotten Belt.  And yes, the bag.... This story is kind of off the cuff and sloppy. Thank for bringing my attention back to it.


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## thesnowman147 (Feb 2, 2017)

I really enjoyed it, it's a very good introduction to the story. I kind of got some sort of mob vibe going on between the two, the MC is kind of reluctantly involved in it. I do agree with the second poster said about the long sentences, other than that though, good job!


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## Jay Greenstein (Feb 2, 2017)

Look at this as a reader. At the end of this we’ve read 519 words. We’re on the third standard manuscript page, and what happened?

• Someone named Phil left an apartment in an unknown city in an unknown society, on an unknown planet. Why? Also unknown. In the end, given that after signing the papers he would have to make reservations and handle the usual governmental things involved in leaving their jurisdiction, leaving the bag home till that’s taken care of would seem to make sense.
• Someone named Bob, who may work in some sort of a place that serves booze with breakfast, wants to send Phil to someplace unknown for unknown reasons, to do unknown things. But Phil doesn’t want to go, also for unknown reasons. Phil knows. Bob knows. Doesn’t it make sense to have the one the story was written for know too?
• Bob wants to know if Phil likes blood, for unknown reasons. But we don’t find out if he does or doesn’t, only that he doesn’t care. I have no idea of why it matters or was mentioned.
• Phil tells the reader he knows about Bob’s taste in women, but doesn’t follow through. We also learn that Phil isn’t sure of how old Bob is—but not why that matters.
• Phil tells Bob that he wants a job. Doing what we have no idea. Nor do we know why bob has papers that will give him that job. It’s not a contract, so I have no idea of what he’s talking about. Is it to go to the unknown planet for unknown reasons, or to release him from an obligation to do that, so he can take another job? No way to tell.
• Phil signs some papers and is off to somewhere unknown to do unknown things.

The short version: We read two pages and nothing entertaining happened, other than that two people we don’t know talked about things for which we have no context. You know who Phil is and what the relationship between him and Bob is. So for you, who knows what’s going on, each line calls up memories and images waiting in your mind. But because you don’t give the reader context, and a reason to care, each line calls up memories and images waiting in *your* mind.

What you’re doing is watching the film version in your mind and describing what you see happening, as if it’s the director’s commentary track for the film version. But can the reader see if Bob smiles or frowns on seeing Phil come in? No. Can we see of Phil is anxious to go or looking resigned? No. But both matter a great deal to the feel of the scene. Without that there’s no emotional content, and therefore no entertainment.

You say that an entire planet is populated by “weirdoes.” Given that I know nothing about Phil, not even if he’s human, or himself weird by my standards, what can the term weirdoes mean to me when applied to a world?

At the moment you’re thinking of a story as being what happens. But it’s not. That’s a report, or a history. Story is the effect of the events on, and the response to them, of the protagonist. Drama, as the great Alfred Hitchcock observed, is life without the dull bits. And talking about the sex life and age of someone whose age and sex life don’t matter to the scene in progress, is a dull bit—a bit of gossip about someone the reader neither knows nor cares about.

Here’s the thing. Your reader is deciding if they want to read the story or turn to something else. That means you need to hook them, and do it fast. Sol Stein put it this way: “A novel is like a car—it won’t go anywhere until you turn on the engine. The “engine” of both fiction and nonfiction is the point at which the reader makes the decision not to put the book down. The engine should start in the first three pages, the closer to the top of page one the better.”

So don’t waste time talking about a city the reader can’t see. The purpose of the opening isn’t to follow the protagonist around recording what’s said and done. It’s to get the protagonist off the planet and to where the action takes place.

Suppose, for example, you’d begin with Phil checking in for the trip. If he looked at the ship, he could blow out a breath and curse Bob for forcing him to go to wherever he’s bound. That tells us everything of importance we learned in this chunk of prose. And if nothing that moves the plot happens while he’s on the ship you could open with him getting off, and lost nothing.

What matters is that you have three pages or less to make the reader care about Phil. Without that they’ll stop reading. Bore the reader in those pages and they leave. Lecture them and they leave. Confuse them and they leave. 

Obviously, we never learned how to do that, or the necessity of entertaining the reader, page after page, in our school days. There, we became proficient in writing essays and reports, which only inform, and hardly ever entertain. So to hook that reader—to start that engine—takes tricks of the trade that were never mentioned in school. And given that, a bit of time spent digging out those tricks is time well spent.

Not good news. But Mark Twain put it well with, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” So hit the library’s fiction writing section to get rid of some of that, “just ain’t so.”

Sorry for being so long winded. What can I say? I write novels, so I can’t say good morning in less than a thousand words.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.


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## C.Stone (Feb 15, 2017)

I think with some work this could be a great opening chapter. I personally enjoy the futuristic vibe and think it was cool. good job!


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## sailorguitar (Feb 19, 2017)

Thanks for the comments, support an criticism.


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## Scrivener123 (Mar 5, 2017)

Nice atmosphere. I was picturing the setting. I just have a few comments. This paragraph confused me a little (someone already addressed the first sentence): _Buildings towered up as gleaming sentinels in the grim moonlight reflecting the blue grey gloom as if standards for something better as I carried myself heavily down the street, head down and marching to my own weary tune. The cement at my feet lay slippery and wet. Taxis on my right, left, hovers bleating everywhere, blaring their sound, the company a cacophony; lights reflecting like jazz; dizzy in their early morning prism in this twenty-four hour city. The sun peeked an eye above the horizon, hinting at her rising.

_It might be a good ideas to break up the sentences a little more and make a few changes. For instance: Buildings towered up *like* gleaming sentinels in the grim moonlight. They reflected the blue grey gloom as if standards for something better. I carried myself heavily down the street, head down and marching to my own weary tune.


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## Kusinjo (Mar 30, 2017)

Maybe a bit jumbled, but I like the music behind the flow of the story. Reminds me of a Sci-Fi/Post-Noir thriller, and plays like an out of tune big band that still sounds somehow ... right. With refinement, this story could be massively entertaining!


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## NeenaDiHope (Apr 23, 2017)

The way this reads reminds me of the old black and white private eye movies, the narrative is very similar. I love that it has that feel but it is set in the future. I think you will have a great book when it's done! 


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