Saturday, August 12, 2017

Partitions clanged shut - snippet from WIP for #WeWriWa #SciFi

Welcome to another Sunday with Weekend Writing Warriors. Meet writers in various genres and read 8-10 sentence snippets of their stories.

Okay, I’m biting the bullet and offering snippets from my WIP. It’s at 56k words and I’m editing. Among other things, I have to deal with killing off one minor character and rewriting him out of later scenes. This story has several deaths.

Current Tag line: What alien creatures lurk under the ice crust of Europa?

Here are the next few lines of Chapter one. Dr. Nikki Bell is traveling to Europa to study the alien life in the ocean.
It’s not a final version and any suggestions will be especially appreciated.

Her arms flailing for a grip, Nikki struggled to catch hold of the handrail. Her emergency training kicked in. Primed by drills every third day of the voyage, she knew what to do. She dived for the nearest oxygen canister. Working one handed while grasping the rail, she fastened the mask around her mouth and nose. Her mind cleared, clicking into logical mode. The spaceship was damaged, possibly hit by a stray asteroid on the outer fringes of the belt.
Heavy partitions clanged shut, separating the damaged sections of the ship. The nearer set slammed closed, and a second, fainter clunk, sounded in the opposite direction. Her section was isolated from the rest of the ship.



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20 comments:

  1. Yikes! It's a good thing she's trained for situations like this. :)

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    1. She'll fall into some situations where she has no training.

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  2. What a tense and potentially dangerous situation - but she seems to have everything under control!

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  3. I love this dilemma -- and her preparedness for it. This is kind of the sci fi equivalent of being between a rock and a hard place.

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    1. Exactly - he has a lot of rocky place to negotiate in this story.

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  4. Oops not a good situation to be in. But I liked the way she so well prepared for it.

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  5. Gah, so intense, but it looks like she has it handled!

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  6. Dangerous situation to be in. I'm curious to see how it will play out.

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  7. I'm not so sure that her section being isolated from the rest of the ship is necessarily a good thing.

    And I'd like to extend my condolences on having to write out a minor character. I have a novel that's been sitting on the back burner for years because I can't figure out how to erase a character and still keep something important that she was involved in. Good luck!

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  8. Great details in this scene. I was right there with her. The doors slamming shut sounds pretty ominous.

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    1. Thanks - that is my intention. Start with a bang.

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  9. You certainly start out with a bang! Wow! Excellent description of the situation, her training, yet you kept the frightening aspects. Great beginning.

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  10. Good thing she's staying so calm and relying on her training (so far anyway). Quite the tense situation! Enjoyed the excerpt and can't wait for more...

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  11. Quick thinking. She's obviously used to dealing with crises.

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