Today’s blog is by my good friend and critique partner, the incredible writer Lauren McGuire.
Last year I won an international writing contest, and this April myself and eleven other winners were flown out to Los Angeles for a week-long master class followed by a gala and fancy-pants book signing. As part of the class, we were tasked with writing a full story beginning, middle, and end within 24 hours.
This is not a task for the faint of heart. We were given a challenge, a writing twin, and a prompt and sent on our way for 24 hours of creative freedom.
The challenge: Speak to a stranger. I’m Southern. I’d spoken to a stranger within the first five minutes of landing in LA. Would you like to know about Mitch, the driver who took me from LAX to the Loews Hotel, or Anthony who bagged my groceries at Ralph’s?
My writing twin: Andrew, a fellow writer from Surry, England. We were meant to bounce ideas off one another and offer moral support. This mostly consisted of us barreling down Hollywood Boulevard as I rambled about my idea and he shivered in existential dread while avoiding a huge human in a gorilla suit. Twenty minutes later, we were buried in our own work.
My prompt: A rock. Like one found in your backyard.
What to do? After some brainstorming, I came up with what I thought would be my opening sentence (it would actually be my last) and three ideas related to that sentence. I chose one idea to expand on, and I was off. I didn’t have time to order and read a ton of books, but I needed several things. The first was a highly magnetic element. One Google search and several scanned science sites later I had my element—neodymium.
Next, I needed a planet or meteor on which to locate this element. This took me on a completely different research thread where I discovered a wonderful conspiracy theory dating back to the 1970’s called the Nibiru Cataclysm. Nibiru comes from the Akkadian word for “crossing” or “point of transition”. Perfect. The Nibiru conspiracy theorized that a large planetary body would collide or closely pass by Earth thus causing a cataclysm. Boom. I had a name for my planet.
Finally, I needed to place that planet somewhere near a star with a believable gravity (what kind of star? how far?), brush up on a few more details, then I was ready to write. According to our instructors, our stories didn’t need to be completely accurate, but they did need to be consistent. I didn’t need to provide the elemental details for neodymium or provide schematics for how it made my ship’s engine work, but I did need to establish in a plausible way that the highly rare and highly magnetic element powered the ship. Also, I loved the etymology of the word Nibiru. It worked into my theme perfectly.
As for my resources, Google was a great launch pad for me, but the real key was to dive into the materials that Google skimmed. Source material was key. In this mini-project, educational resources were great as well. In the end, I used the following:
Brittanica.com for planetary sizes, gravities, and distances from major stars.
Webelements.com for information on the element neodymium.
Wordhippo.com, a wonderful thesaurus tool, to elevate the language of my post-human characters.
A variety of science-y and non-science-y articles about the Nibiru Cataclysm that could have easily led me down a research rabbit hole had I not been strapped for time.
A funny thing happened during my research which, coincidentally, took about two hours. The more I chased the information I needed, the more my brain ran the program for the story in the background, so that when I was ready to start writing I had a character, a setting, and a dilemma. By 2pm the next day, I had a full story that I loved.
My plan is to polish my short story, Skies Over Nibiru, and send it out. If you’re interested in that journey, follow me @mcguirestoried and check out my story “Karma Birds” in Writers of the Future vol 41.
Thanks, Lauren. Congratulations on the much deserved award and book release. You’re amazing!