Incidently, (mostly) based on a true story. 5000 words, sci-fi

First 3 paras:
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As is the traditional lot of the subbie - “subaltern” to you civilians; a young Lieutenant with an Armoured troop to call his own – I was in trouble, again. Somehow I had annoyed the Adjutant sufficiently to enjoy some official ire, and as direct consequence, I was placed in command of my Regiment's Base Open House display. Instead of facing a weekend of long-neglected yardwork and housecleaning, subject to my loving wife's domestic discipline, I was now going to spend a day demonstrating to the general public, granted their annual freedom of the base, exactly where their tax dollars were being spent.

Gee Br'er Fox, please don't throw me in that briar patch!

The Regiment had decided to exhibit the Coyote; an eight-wheeled armoured car outfitted with (amongst other toys) an electronic sensor package mounted on a retractable mast. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of said sensor package, we had impressed an infantry section of our armoury-mates to counter-march in the bushes a couple of kicks away from our stand. Our shtick was to pick up the infantry (invisible to the naked eye, being well camouflaged) on the doppler radar, slew the high-res NOD-IR night vision camera onto their bearing and presto! There they were in all their glowing infrared splendor.
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DG
 

Right now we are accelerating, but there is only so far you can go in second gear before the engine starts to labour.

+ (2nd Para) I don't mind a lot of information up front but maybe consider putting it into an active voice.

PS: Nice car, enjoy!

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited June 02, 2005).]
 

Before I start in, I should probably let this out - I'm really proud of this one. It has some by-God CRAFT in it for once (especially once I spent some time tweaking it)

It has some flaws, I think... but I'm interested in having it read by some of y'all, and see if the flaws you find are the same as the ones I think are in there.

Anyway, this story is a "war story with a twist" - and I need to explain the term "war story" in my context. I spent a fair bit of time in uniform, and soldiering makes you do so many weird and crazy things that you wind up with a collection of acecdotes of the various crazy and stupid scrapes you got into.

I could (and have) relate these for HOURS, and I am the rule, not the exception, amongst soldiers. "There was this time, in XXXX...."

These "war stories" tend to have a few things in common:

- usually funny or upbeat (the dark ones get told much less often)

- told from first-person (it's not kosher to tell somebody else's stories)

- involve some manner of hijinks, but usually nobody *seriously* hurt

- as a consequence of usually being told by soldiers to soldiers, contain a great deal of military shorthand. The phrase "So there I was, humping the C6," means something very specific to a soldier. It also brings along with it an understanding on exactly what a C6 is, how big it is, how much it weighs, what it smells like, what it does, its bad habits, what kind of person winds up being assigned to it, their role, etc etc etc.

I can set the scene in a war story (told to another soldier) in a single sentence. That same sentence, told to a civilian, would be utterly incomprehensible - they lack the backstory, the sort of cultural history, upon which these sorts of stories depend.

That means I have to expound on some of this stuff a little bit, to give someone without the background a leg up into the story. Some of it can be implied - in a Recce Regiment, the Adj is responsible for the discipline of the junior officers (the subbies) while in garrison. As such, the Adj is always the bad guy in a subbie story, because he's the headmaster. Discipline is usually extra duties, so when you've been bad as a subbie, you get nailed with some extra task that you otherwise would not have been done.

I don't have to spell that out explicitly here, because the Adj never actually enters the story. He's on the main character's mind a lot, because if he screws up it's the Adj who will be dealing with him (and nothing good EVER comes of being called in front of the Adj) That first para is enough to establish the Adj/Subbie relationship, and to place the character where is is because he has been bad and is being punished. That, in turn, gives us a glimpse into the character's mind - we can start to establish his personality.

Then I have to introduce a certain piece of technology. The story absolutely hinges on the unintended consequences of the capabilities of this bit of tech (twice!) so I **must** explain what it is, what it does, and how it works. The trick is to do so without sounding like an excerpt from Jane's, so I sketch in only what you need to know to make the story work (you won't, for example, be told the wavelength of the radar, or how thick the armour is on the Coyote, or any other meaningless trivia)

It helps a lot (and it is entirely on purpose) that the reason why the narrator is there in the scene is to explain how this stuff works to the public during Open House Day. In a way, the reader is made into one of the audience at the dog and pony show that the narrator is presenting. That way I get to explain this bit of technology within the context of the story (and without resorting to "As you know Bob, the purpose of the hyperspace demodulator is to quantify the temporal flex around the Gauss emitters")

In practical terms though, that makes the first couple of paragraphs, where I'm describing the goings-on at the display stand, how the technology works, and still working some character (and tonal) exposition into the mix, a little... intense? Busy? Not quite "frantic" or "hurried" I think, but there IS a lot going on there.

Happily, the reader IS going to get a break (so is the narrator) Once we've set the scene and explained all the necessary tech, the kitchen opens for lunch, the crowds get in line to eat, and the narrator (and thus the reader) gets to relax.

Which is, of course, when I get to drop the boom on him. Twice.

Because you see, it's really a science fiction story. It starts out as a "war story" (and up until the point that it firmly crosses the boundery into scifi, it's 100% true. Actually happened. I was there.)

And I'm proud of the transition too. It's a completely natural consequence of the unintended consequence that really happened - if we make a certain assumption.

I don't want to say more or I'll ruin the suprise.

I will say this though - it's not a "trick ending" story. The Big Suprise happens at about the midpoint, and the meat of the story is the reaction to the suprise. We start with a lighthearted war story, and then a semi-serious "real" story falls out of it. (I say "semi-serious" because while things do get more serious, it's still pretty lighthearted. It's not a "dark" story at all - in fact, I felt the "dark" version was the easy way out)

So who wants to read it?

DG

[This message has been edited by DG (edited June 02, 2005).]
 

DG
 

The reason I think isn't as important: military stories usually make my eyes glaze over. Everyone's a man; everyone's known by last name or title; and there's lots of techno detail about gizmos. I could still get into a military story if there's something way cool in it, like space aliens, or a life-or-death struggle.

In case it isn't just me (I was assuming it was): what's the cool thing in your story -- the reason you want to write it? Start there, maybe. If you can't, start with something else cool or intriguing. All that's happened so far is the soldier's got an order to host an open house -- not intriguing, to me.
 

Honestly, I have to disagree with Survivor on the feel for the story. It feels more like the opening of a novel than a short story. I get the sense that the punch line is far away.

Anyway, I'm willing to read it if you're willing to give me some time. I turned around somebody's 250 word flash in 20 minutes, but 5000 words is a different kind of beasty.
 

By trying to tell an army story as though it is aimed at a non-army audience, you're raising the expectation that...I don't know. The expectation that there's going to be a punchline.

Or to put it another way, there is simply no way that I'm going to put up with constant explanations of things like "subbie" (by the way, most the people here would have to look up "subaltern" too, we don't commonly call them that over here). Not for a story longer than a page long. So that might be what makes me say I'd expect the payoff that soon.