Short Story Challenge

Short Story Writer’s Journal: (Unfinished Story, contains spoilers)

This was supposed to be a short story with dialogue as the focal point vis-a-vis these practice elements:

• Vary speech with reflection.
• Intersperse dialogue with setting.
• Break it up with description.
• Switch between direct speech and reported speech.
• Put dialogue at the front of your story.
• Pack dialogue with information.
• Pack short bursts of dialogue into one paragraph.

Alas, I covered only a few of them and not to my satisfaction. Also, the story outran me in that I think it’s probably at least a novella-length work and contains a significant amount of world-building. For example:

1. How did these women get to the island?

2. Which world or planet is this happening on?

3. Where did the houses and other industrial items come from? (modern crossbow, walkie-talkies with batteries.)

4. Is there any electricity here? (Spoiler: Nope, not on the island, at any rate.)

5. What are these communal living arrangements? What rules do people live by?

6. The hows and the whats of food production, clean water (wells), sanitation, medicine etc.

I like the premise of a story in which a large group of 21st Century women find themselves in an unspoiled world with no idea of how they arrived and only a determination to survive. The man who turns up at the end (of this beginning) may or may not be alive but for sure he’ll not be allowed onto the island.

If you’d like to read more these women then let me know! Meanwhile ,I’ll be starting work on the next story. Idle hands and all that jazz; haha.

A summary listing of all short stories in this challenge can be found by clicking 52-in-52.)