The Hunt of the Sci-Fi Short Story Disease

Aiya!

Well, this has been an interesting last week of school for the term for me.

I love writing and critiquing, and have been doing a fair bit of both lately, and then, all of these kids in year nine suddenly needed my help; all of them Inspired to write 1100 word sci-fi short stories. *Squints suspiciously and puts on detective coat.*

What on earth had overcome them?

I accepted their requests for help and set off to find my answer.

Was there some sort of disease that was running through the year? Why were these highly uncreative people suddenly seeking me out, come of which I hardly knew?

I needed to know the truth.

My first client had been showing symptoms of this disease early on, talking about the world halting in its turning until one side always faced the sun.

Another was suffering from time travel delirium and thinking that one could sacrifice part of themselves to obtain a supernatural power such as that to time travel.

The next person who was suffering from this disease seemed to think that Earth was flooding, and that all of the countries were slowly submerging; and yet she lives in Australia, “The Great South Desert.”

And even still, I had one very recent patient who seemed to be having visions of people who were exploring the moons of Jupiter, and someone dying along the way.

How could such a disease occur? And to be as specific as to require them to write a story that was between 800 and 1100 words before the 21st of September 2017? Pieces were beginning to fit together in my mind like the puzzles that my mother and I flee from.

I couldn’t openly show that I was trying to hunt down where this disease had stemmed from— else my clients realised and retaliated, attacking me with their strangely programmed brains. Perhaps it was a programming virus; hence they were all thinking in a science-y manner. As it was, to avoid giving myself away I attended school as per normal, spending a fair bit of time around these people.

They were not acting any differently to usual, but they all seemed to want to write; even going as far as to drag me into the library with them at lunch to help them with their writing.

In one history class, I was finished all I needed to be doing, and decided to continue my search on the disease— determined to find where it was coming from before it spread any further in the years. My teacher walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder to see what I was doing. Instead of acting confused that I was looking over a 1000 word sci-fi story written by a highly uncreative student, he nodded, and then answered all of my questions, unintentionally of course.

“Oh good, I’m so glad that she took my advice to get you to look over her assessment task. A lot of them have been struggling to get the short story part written.”

I couldn’t believe it. The cause of the disease was my teacher.

Mission closed.

*Slips off detective cloak*

Aaaaanyways…

After this crazed hunt, I figured I should give you guys a prompt. And, seeing that I potentially just failed as a detective, this one seems quite appropriate. xD

So, here is the prompt to make up for m failure as a detective. See if it Inspires you, to keep writing and to keep your characters and plot despite the hardships and failures you fight through together. (And they will come and be high in number— trust me. I just deleted a whole heap of scenes from my WIP to re-write.)

Well, I hope that that was Inspiring. Any ideas or thoughts come from that? Any cool character ideas? Plot? Does it Inspire you to keep writing? Or are you Inspired that a little group of symbols can be arranged to have meaning?

Please share! Or just talk to me. I love to hear from you!