Minimalism

I often find myself struggling with narrative.  It's hard for me to say more - which messes with pacing and makes everything feel rushed.  So I default to dialogue, which is easier for me to write, and the speed tends to come more naturally for me.  But to just stay on dialogue is an outrageous cop-out.  The narrative voice is a hugely significant character - arguably the most important character in many novels.  And I got irritated with myself for neglecting it.

So I decided to try to write a piece where I told a story using only description.  No dialogue, no exposition.

~~~

Still Life

            A parched bit of blasted ground.  Scorch marks and dying grass, still smoldering, but not for much longer.  Northward towered the chimney of a respiration factory, dumping out microorganisms and nanoids by the billions.  A great, glinting cloud of bleached white, billowing into the atmosphere.  The exhalation of a colossus of concrete and steel, dominating the horizon and dwarfing even the clouds in scale.

            The grass grew wild.  Each blade soft, smooth, and flame retardant.  A rich green mantle, embracing the sloping arc of alien earth, hiding a tormented fertility from its parent one hundred thousand miles away.  A mile to the north, and endlessly in every other direction, the grass led the eye to the atmosphere.  Trees, black bark and vivid red leaves, aged sparsely in the plain, lonely reminders of an ancient ecology.  Far distant chimneys interrupted the panorama with their immensity, sentinels of breath and manmade eruption.

            A man sat on a rock at the edge of the blasted ground.  He had cuffed his sleeves, the orange cloth bunched roughly above his elbows.  A calloused hand rested on his knee, pinning a map in place.  A map he ignored.  A number sewn in black stood out above his breast.  The only embellishment of his one-piece garment.  A small digital display, surgically implanted, glowed brightly from his forearm:

4 years 300 days 15 hours 32 minutes

            Behind him a teardrop shaped capsule steamed.  A single door had been opened, revealing a cramped interior.  No instruments.  No controls.  Three thrusters glowed orange, barely visible above the shallow crater the vehicle had pounded into the landscape.

            Two bags lay at the man’s feet.  Personal Effects had been emblazoned on the smaller of the two, the larger was unmarked.  Both had been opened.

            The sky was pale blue.  Clouds thick with chemical reaction ranged from dark grey to purple.  Great arcs of lightning and accompanying bursts of flame cut gathering thunderheads into piecemeal cumulus, only to gather again and be scattered again.  The sun, well on its way to setting, kept the heat uncomfortable. 

            And across the sky loomed a crescent planet, enormous and breathtaking.  Oceans, mountains, endless life and weather – still arresting despite the distance.  And the man’s eyes were fixed upward, holding that world in rapt intensity.

            His right hand held a small projector that cast a moving image.

A young woman.  A little girl.  Dancing with a man identical to himself, among trees that were not black with age, and under clouds that didn’t burn.