Idyll

Fronts of residential buildings in the colony you will one day inhabit will all face the ocean, each apartment constructed corner-on to the view, allowing you and everyone like you to enjoy the morning glow of sunrise on one side, and on the other side, to clink cocktails in the daily shimmer of sunset; living here, you may at times feel that life could be a fairy-tale like the ones in the Disney films you recall from childhood museums. The only access to these buildings will be at the rear; here the narrative will have more of a Grimms fairy-tale flavour; the sun’s benevolent reach won’t extend to the network of alleyways furnished end to end with robot-controlled dumpsters of rotting rubbish (and worse), carpeted with abandoned needles, and populated with rats and the desperate, the ones who will never live in an apartment overlooking the ocean; everyone like you – and especially you yourself – will fear and avoid the backs.

Idyll is the colony’s name, selected by a panel of marketing and PR bots, and intended to evoke a sense that to live here is to have enjoyed good fortune, to be one of the chosen ones, to deserve to benefit from the apogee of human post-terrestrial civilisation. But you have an increasing awareness that this is no idyll; you feel trapped here, in this luxurious, customised environment that caters to your every need but one; that brings you cocktails and culture, art and entertainment without having to leave your residence; you yearn for the unknown, the new; for company that surprises you, ideas that jolt and make you think. You yearn for the danger of the backs, because you know that they, and only they, represent reality.

Energy from the sun will be harvested through solar panels on the rooves, which will extend over the alleyways to maximise power generation – a controversial decision that will have raged when the colony was first built; the humanists will have objected on the grounds that it could be damaging to the life chances and life expectancy of the desperate who would service the dumpsters. But the survivalists must have won out; the desperate have no value for them, and are therefore deserving of no rights; the desperate are numerous and breed as freely as the rats, their argument will have gone; the ultimate deciding factor will not have been engagement in the plight of the desperate, but an overwhelming lack of care born of a sense of relief that their side – the survivalists, the colonisers, escaped the same fate – an all-encompassing societal and sociopathic sense of apathy.

Compromise was what they tried to drum into you in school, all those times in front of the screen, where you had to agree with one of five points of view on a ‘line of accord’, where you could spot and avoid the two ends of the line, but not always the hidden evils, the traps and perils in the other three. Compromise is a skill, they said. We can only thrive if we all agree. But when you hack into the server, when you read the locked-down files marked ‘hist’ and ‘philos’ you will see that a place built on a lie, built on a basic tenet of compromise, merely mocks compromise. You will learn that the thread that runs through human time is not compromise, not in the old times and not now. You will know that the key theme of human life – the theme that shapes your sense of wrong and fuels your desire to break free of this place, to escape this prison of luxury and abuse, this jail of lies – the key theme is always conflict.

Notes:

Pick a word 🡪 front

Write down its opposite. Or something that conveys the opposite to you 🡪 back

Then create a short story arc (one or two sentences) that takes the reader on a journey from the first word to the last. 🡪

Fronting the ocean, Mario’s corner apartment enjoys a wraparound balcony that lets him sit in the morning glow of sunrise on one side, and on the other side, clink cocktails in the shimmer of sunsets every evening; living here, life can feel like one long fairytale. It’s a different story on the other side of the building, where he must run the vanguard of dumpsters filled with rotting rubbish, in a narrow and perennially shaded, pothole-riddled and rat-infested alleyway at the back.

The story must start and end on these two words.

Change the pronouns. 🡪

Fronting the ocean, our corner apartment enjoys a wraparound balcony that lets us sit in the morning glow of sunrise on one side, and on the other side, clink cocktails in the shimmer of sunsets every evening; living here, life can feel like one long fairytale. It’s a different story on the other side of the building, where we must run the vanguard of dumpsters filled with rotting rubbish, in a narrow and perennially shaded, pothole-riddled and rat-infested alleyway at the back.

Change the narrative perspective to something you wouldn’t normally use : second person present, omniscient third person, first person future. Try something new. 🡪 (second person future)

Fronts of residential buildings in the colony you will one day inhabit will all face the ocean, each apartment constructed corner-on to the view, allowing you and everyone like you to enjoy the morning glow of sunrise on one side, and on the other side, to clink cocktails in the daily shimmer of sunset; living here, you may at times feel that life could be a fairytale like the ones in the Disney films you recall from childhood museums. The only access to these buildings will be at the rear; here the narrative will have more of a Grimms fairytale flavour; the sun’s benevolent reach won’t extend to the network of alleyways furnished end to end with robot-controlled dumpsters of rotting rubbish (and worse), carpeted with abandoned needles, and populated with rats and the desperate, the ones who will never live in an apartment overlooking the ocean; everyone like you – and especially you yourself – will fear and avoid the backs.

Pick another word. (Clicked on ‘another’)

A new one, ideally at random, but ensure it’s not a word that appears anywhere in your first story thread. 🡪 energy

Write down its opposite. The most diametrically opposed word you can think of. Go on, push it to the extreme.🡪 apathy

Then create another brief story arc which takes the reader from the first to the last word.

Energy from the sun is harvested through solar panels on the rooves, which extend over the alleyways to maximise power generation – a controversial decision when the colony was first built; the humanists suggested it might damage the life chances and life expectancy of the desperate who service the dumpsters. But the survivalists won out; the desperate have no value to them and deserve no rights; the desperate are numerous and breed as freely as the rats, went the argument; the ultimate deciding factor was not engagement in the plight of the desperate, but an overwhelming lack of care born of a sense of relief that your side,the survivalists, the coloniers had escaped the same fate – an all-encompassing societal and sociopathic sense of apathy.

[clicked on ‘reader’]

Kill off your character or choose a different narrative perspective from the first story arc.

Energy from the sun will be harvested through solar panels on the rooves, which would extend over the alleyways to maximise power generation – a controversial decision that will have raged when the colony was first built; the humanists will have objected on the grounds that it could be damaging to the life chances and life expectancy of the desperate who would service the dumpsters. But the survivalists won out; the desperate have no value to them, and are therefore deserving of no rights; the desperate are numerous and breed as freely as the rats, their argument will have gone; the ultimate deciding factor will not have been engagement in the plight of the desperate, but an overwhelming lack of care born of a sense of relief that their side – the survivalists, the colonisers, escaped the same fate – an all-encompassing societal and sociopathic sense of apathy.

[clicked on ‘different’]

This is a dead end – what does that do to your story?

[clicked on ‘story’]

Write down its opposite. The most diametrically opposed word you can think of. 🡪 idyll

[clicked on ‘think’] 🡪 reality

Then create another brief story arc which takes the reader from the first to the last word.

[clicked on ‘reader’]

Kill off your character or choose a different narrative perspective from the first story arc.

[clicked on ‘kill’]

Do this again, a third time.

Choose a word, as randomly as possible, that does not appear in either stories. 🡪 compromise

Then identify its disintegrating antonym. 🡪 conflict

Write another connecting story between the two.

Compromise was what they tried to drum into you in school, all those citizenship lessons in front of the computer, faced with ridiculous situations where you had to click on the statement you agreed with out of a choice of five, where you could easily see the two extremes, but it was harder to identify the lurking evils, the traps and pitfalls between the remaining three. Compromise was a skill, they said. The colony can only thrive if we all make sacrifices. But when you hacked into the central server, when you read the locked-down ancient files labelled ‘history’ and ‘philosophy’ you realised that a colony based on compromise, a society built on a lie, built on a central inequality beyond discussion, made a mockery of compromise. You realised that the narrative thread running through human history is not compromise; not in ancient times and not now. You realised that the central theme of human history is conflict.

Do not use words of more than six letters – other than your first and last.

Compromise was what they tried to drum into you in school, all those times in front of the screen, where you had to agree with one of five points of view on a ‘line of accord’, where you could spot and avoid the two ends of the line, but not always the hidden evils, the traps and perils in the other three. Compromise was a skill, they said. We can only thrive if we all agree. But when you hacked into the server, when you read the locked-down files marked ‘hist’ and ‘philos’ you saw that a place built on a lie, built on a basic tenet of compromise, merely mocked compromise. You learnt that the thread that runs through human time is not compromise; not in the old times and not now. You found that the key theme of human life, the theme that shapes your sense of wrong and your desire to break free of this place, to break free of the wealth, the compromise and the lies, is always conflict.

[clicked on ‘first’]

Be distinct.

Once completed, look at your three short stories, how might you thread them together?

[clicked on ‘thread’]

Mix them up. The first is not always the start.

[clicked on ‘start’]

If there’s an obvious connection, break it.

Make a new one. Identify the surreal and subconscious connections that may lie under the surface.

[clicked on ‘under’]

A little rewriting is permissible.

But not too much.

Now, read it to me…

Jo Clark is a genre-fluid writer from the North of England who begrudgingly co-habits with a passive aggressive domestic micropanther. Jo left behind a trail of abandoned work-in-progress novels in 2021 when she discovered flash fiction, but continues to harbour an unrealistic intention to return to longer form fiction. Proud to have words in a range of places including voidspace, Splonk, Daily Drunk, Cutbow Quarterly, Free Flash Fiction, and Ram Eye press, she tweets at @the_joclark