Writing Excuses, Season 7, Episode 4, 'Brevity'

I was in a hurry to write this, but it still took three days, off and on. It appears that WE might have closed commenting on old threads, which is a pity for people catching up, like myself. So, anyway, for no particular reason, I thought I would post my response to the Writing Prompt in the S7E04 cast, the subject of which was brevity. The prompt, given by Howard, was 'Give us a group of people on a long trip in space with a problem, which they solve. Do it in 150 words.'

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In years of planning and modelling, they hadn’t considered this. Auto-docs monitored health, coordinating diet and exercise, recommending leisure based on psychometrics. Four crew awake for four weeks annually, rotating with the other forty-four in stasis. Research confirmed that it suspended ageing. The scientists had green-flagged the mission. Progress had been optimal.

Ten years gone, sixty-four remaining, yesterday, Miller had lifted the first corpse from its capsule. Of four, only Dreyfus had been alive. Of the next twelve, only Mai Jong-Won lived. Five anxious faces stared at Miller.

‘Remaining life signs are A1, as were yours.’

‘What’s the arithmetic?’ Powell snapped.

‘At the same attrition there would be nine of us. With stasis, we’d age thirty-two years, without it, sixty-four.

Powell shook her head, ‘Too old, or dead.’

‘There is an answer.’ They all looked at Dreyfus, their slow panic becoming desperate hope. ‘We need to breed a new crew.’

Out of Excuses

I plan to start posting about writing on this blog, but first, some context.

I have long been an aspiring writer of fantasy. I suppose it comes from being an avid reader from a relatively early age, from a first introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien and Larry Niven (God bless you, Dad) - and from always having had an urge to create (thank you, Mum). I had dabbled with writing, written short stories and the first novel in a trilogy. That took the best part of 15 years (on and off, of course!!) - it's now 225,000 words and not fit for publication. How do I know that? Because about 3 years ago I discovered the excellent Writing Excuses podcast.

I am a long time fan of Robert Jordan and his excellent Wheel of Time series. With the sad passing of Mr. Jordan, some bloke called Brandon Sanderson was brought in to write the last book from Mr. Jordan's notes. Well, one book became three, but it was clear straight away on reading The Gathering Storm, that this Sanderson fellow warranted further investigation. Having read his Mistborn books and started on the other Cosmere series, I am now an big fan, and it was a short step from Brandon's website to Writing Excuses (WE), the excellent and deservedly award-winning podcast for aspiring writers by Sanderson and his friends Dan Wells (horror writer); Howard Tayler (cartoonist and now published author) and Hugo Award winning ;o) Mary Robinette Kowal (author and puppeteer).

Writing Excuses is a hugely useful, entertaining and educational weekly podcast, now in its ninth season, which exposes listeners to the sage advice and wealth of experience of the casters, but also to the limitless expertise of their guests, who appear from time to time to discuss specialist subjects, as it were. I cannot began to relate how much I have learned about writing from this quite rightly lauded podcast. That learning alone is worth its weight in gold, but I have