Here are some of my short, 'one-shot' fiction pieces. Nice bite-sized stories that don't lead down a rabbit-hole of serialised sequels.
- Humanisation
- Nationalism
- No Further Instructions
- The Legend of the Lastborn
- Titan
- Welcome To The Resistance
- Yeshua's Pilgrimage
- Breaking News
So this was a submission to one of my favourite fiction communities on reddit.com, /r/HFY. HFY stands for 'Humanity Fuck Yeah,' and as the name suggests, it's a place for fiction that somehow highlights how humanity is awesome (or terrifying). This piece was an attempt to subvert the criteria of the sub, whilst remaining true to its spirit.
Another submission to HFY, and annother tilt at the idea of 'cultural victory.' This story actually includes a link to the song that inspired. Cheating, I know, but something-something-boundary-pushing-multimedia-fiction. Oh yeah, no descriptive text in this one either–purely dialogue.
This was a response to the writing prompt "The last message we received was, 'No further instructions.'" The prompt has a tech-y sci-fi feel to it, so I tried to take it in another direction, and went with fantasy. Super-short.
HFY definitely leans towards sci-fi, but the community doesn't require as such. As a fantasy-geek from way back, I thought I'd try my hand at some fantastical HFY. Wasn't really a hit, but I was happy with it.
This piece was a response to the prompt "When I met Titan, I became a God of Love." on /r/Worldprompts - a spin-oof subreddit from /r/worldbuilding, which is sort of a lovechild between it and /r/writingprompts. Whenever I do one of these prompt-stories, I tend to also chuck in an arbitrary writing experiment for myself. This time it was writing in 2nd person perspective.
Of all my one-shots, this is the most likely to graduate to serial status. Some background; in 2015 /u/loki130 crossposted an /r/writingprompts story he wrote to /r/HFY. The prompt involved the notion that FTL technology was being purposefully 'jammed' by alien species, because humanity was being deliberately quarantined. /u/loki130's story was a hit, and went on to become the well-received Quarantine series on /r/HFY. In the comment thread of the initially cross-posted prompt, I chucked in a sort of comedic sequel to /u/loki130's post where humans are sort of a relateable terrorist-fugitive race. I'm quite fond of the premise, and have often considered fleshing it out into it's own setting/series. Maybe you'll be reading this outdated text after I've already done so, because I'm pretty sure that I will, and that it'll be fun.
Since discovering that I like comedy writing, and that others like it, I guess I started doubting my ability to write 'serious' genre pap. That prompted me to submit this piece to /r/HFY, where I also tried to play with pacing, and alternating between two differently tensed plot-threads. I was pretty happy with it, but it wasn't that well received either. On the one hand, it is slow and religiously themed, and therefore not really accessible (especially on reddit). On the other hand, my comedy writing is probably stronger, or at least more natural to me; maybe I ought to stick with it.
This is sort of a prequel to Welcome To The Resistance, or at least could be one. It's written in the style of a journalistic article detailing a human terror attack on occupied earth, from a 'Trans-Galactic Union' perspective hostile to the humans they've aparrently conquered. Conceptually, I guess I'm playing with writing sympathetic characters unsympathetically, to give readers the feeling of defying the narrator.