Space

[Milky Way]

SPACE

Space is a borderline short story about two astronauts that are drifting in space and manage to meet each other. What happens later is up for you to discover. Based on my barely so called game SPACE and SPACE 2. This story is very predictable but easy to read. I hate difficult books and stories so this is more of an easy one. Enjoy!

I let out a loud yawn like all of my mornings. Got up, put on my slippers and went to the bathroom. Brushed my teeth, took a shower and I was finally ready to go to work. Like all my mornings I decided to browse the news and noticed that NASA was recruiting astronauts for their new ISS mission. It explicitly said that they did not take any responsibility for me and I would be trained for more than a few months. And I didn't care. I didn't have a reason to. My mom died years ago and I had nothing to lose. I registered just for the fun of it. Hundreds of thousands of people register, what was the chance of me getting picked?

I opened up my garage door. My car was some old trash with a barely visible company logo that made it. Either way I didn't care much about it and neither did I take care of it. It gets me where I need to and that's what mattered the most to me. I worked an office job in a large company. They treated us like crap but at least they paid something. "Something" that is enough to pay for my food for a month.

My routine repeated for months and months until one day I received an unknown call. I picked it up and a groggy voice said that I was picked for the NASA ISS mission. I was required to go through a health inspection first and I barely somehow passed. I drank a lot of beer everyday so this really surprised me. After that it was just... nothing. For other 3 months I received no calls from that guy. I just kept on my routine and pretty much forgot about it.

I was awoken by my loud ringtone. It was the same guy with the groggy voice. He asked me to get ready and that a car would come to my house. I didn't have anything nice to wear like a suit so I simply picked what I wear every day: beige colored shorts with a red t-shirt. I had never been this excited and scared in my whole life, well, except when I got mugged.

An hour later a black car drove up to my house and honked. I locked my door and as I was going to the car I turned back to look at my house for, hopefully, not the last time. We drove for hours and hours until we finally arrived. The first thing that caught my gaze was a gigantic rocket. I've no idea why it was kept outside but it was absolutely humongous. You might think that ships are big. Multiply that ship by three and you'll get that rocket I saw.

I was introduced to four other guys who got picked like me. They were friendly and excited. I was too, I guess. It was a mix between being excited and being scared after realizing that I can't back out at this point. I would look like an idiot, an absolute failure. I had to go on that mission. There was no other choice.

End of part 1.

[Ziggy455]

I read over this and I've got some feedback. I'll go with what I think the form and what you've written so far.

 

I didn't like it. Not that it has anything to do with your skill, but I just really read through this and it felt like a really sloppy opener. Your character goes "I applied for a NASA program and got it and then I was sent to a rocket." Why not start off your story with a bang? Why not immediately have this guy in space floating around? It would peak your reader's curiosity. It makes them go "Hold on, why is this guy floating in space?" And then you can focus on creating a more credible approach to how and why your character is in this position.

 

I know it's a story but I don't doubt for one second that all it takes to go to space is a phone-call for a shoddy NASA ISS space request. Something doesn'tadd up. There needs to be a more valid reason as to how this guy is allowed anywhere near a space-program.

 

It's just my opinion, but starting him off floating and working around to how he got there just seems like the thing I would do.

[Milky Way]

Thank you, although at this point the change would be too drastic, I feel. Some pretty good points.

[Milky Way]

PART 2

 

Our training began by us being submerged into water with our space suits on. I was scared as hell. I had read how one person died while training at this exact pool so that didn't help either. There we learnt the basics of moving in space and other manuevers. Luckily it ended before I even knew it and I was out of the water. After that we had some breakfast and went to a class. There, a professor whose name was Victor, explained us what we would do there and gave us scenarios in which we had to either fix something or fix something. It's not like you can go much of anywhere in space.

 

We took the training for much more than a few months. Some days we spent the whole day learning stuff and others we sat in the pool with our space suits. It was fun but still scary. Going into space was always my dream, but I never expected it to happen. We all wanted to be astronauts when we were children, right?

 

The day finally came. The day to use all my training, all of my learnt experience has finally came. We got into our space suits full of anxiety. I couldn't believe this was real, that I was actually going to space. We all got into the rocket and strapped ourselves in. The so very known countdown started. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Liftoff. A huge force went through my whole body. I was beyond scared. Will we crash? After what felt like a few seconds all I could see is black. Did we crash? Did something happen?

 

I awoke only after we broke the barrier of the Earth's atmosphere. It was.. beautiful.. surreal even. The quietness. The empty darkness. Breathtaking. I quickly snapped out of it after the other man hit me softly in the shoulder. He asked whether I was okay and I just said that I zoned out a bit.

 

We were about to connect to the ISS. We were carrying a ton of supplies, so I'm sure they were pretty excited, same as we. A green light came on the screen informing us that we could disengage our straps. Everything was controlled by the computer so we didn't have to control the rocket. As we came nearer and nearer the ISS I felt more and more confident that that everything was going to be okay.

 

End of part 2.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Milky Way

[Ziggy455]

Okay, I read this and there's something that is bugging me. It's your paragraphs. You are trying to condense so much information into a small amount of text that it's detracting us away from the story. Your first paragraph is simply:

 

We did this and it was bad. Then we did that and then that sucked. We moved from there and did this. After doing this we went there and that was why we went there and it was because of there we we did this.

 

So many things go on in this paragraph. A simplistic scene works on the principle of SCENE GOAL, SCENE CONFLICT, and SCENE DISASTER. So why not show us a little bit more of that core conflict. For example, look at your first line.

 

Our training began by us being submerged into water with our space suits on. I was scared as hell. I had read how one person died while training at this exact pool so that didn't help either.

 

 

 

You could have spent a single paragraph that could define a goal, a conflict, and a disaster and it'd just hit me harder than you simply explaining what is happening. E,g,

 

Our training began by us being submerged in water with space suits on; a training exercise made to mimic the effects of low gravity on us. If the crushing water wasn't enough to make panic, I remembered hearing somebody died during this exercise. I tried to keep my cool but heard some sort of crack suddenly! Was it me? Was my suit cracking under pressure or was that just me? I remembered feeling a slight change of relief as I realized it was just my fearful imagination. I calmed my breathing and realized that I was fine, but how long until these stupid suits really did crack?

 

 

This paragraph gives you a little more insight into your character. It also gives you more of an insight into how shoddy the setup is about this NASA ISS mission. And what I showed you was pure showing. It was an event that happened in real-time, and when your reader reads stuff like this, they are more emotionally involved. Simply summarizing things is a sure way to kill the attention of your audience.

 

 

 

PART 2

 

The day finally came. The day to use all my training, all of my learnt experience has finally came. We got into our space suits full of anxiety. I couldn't believe this was real, that I was actually going to space. We all got into the rocket and strapped ourselves in. The so very known countdown started. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Liftoff. A huge force went through my whole body. I was beyond scared. Will we crash? After what felt like a few seconds all I could see is black. Did we crash? Did something happen?

 

I awoke only after we broke the barrier of the Earth's atmosphere. It was.. beautiful.. surreal even. The quietness. The empty darkness. Breathtaking. I quickly snapped out of it after the other man hit me softly in the shoulder. He asked whether I was okay and I just said that I zoned out a bit.

 

We were about to connect to the ISS. We were carrying a ton of supplies, so I'm sure they were pretty excited, same as we. A green light came on the screen informing us that we could disengage our straps. Everything was controlled by the computer so we didn't have to control the rocket. As we came nearer and nearer the ISS I felt more and more confident that that everything was going to be okay.

 

End of part 2.

 

 

You are a good writer but the idea of writing a story is that it is a chain of events that are shown and not told. This feels too short and lacks any sort of emotion. It's just you telling us a bunch of things that happened that lead to another thing that happened but it feels more like an explanation than a story. C

 

Check out this link: http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/showing-and-telling-the-basics.html

 

It will explain something better than I can. Hopefully you can make this story better to the best of your ability and talent.

[Milky Way]

PART 3

*Boosh* - suddenly a loud sound interrupted the looping beeping sounds from the computer. I realized that we've finally arrived at the ISS. The airlock opened and we were greeted by 7 astronauts - 2 women and 5 men, who smiled. The smiles were so obviously forced, but we smiled back. After the introductions and some chit-chat we were free for the day, so I used it to my fullest extent and explored the space ship. There were 6 sectors and most of them were pretty big. A1 was at the top and most of the other ones followed below it, others, extruding to the sides, with solar panels all around the sectors on the outside. While exploring I felt really sick, like that one day I had eaten a spoiled chicken. My stomach was rumbling, but I ignored it. This was way too awesome. The thought that I was floating was just mind blowing. After a few hours, I had finally traveled back to where I started. The ISS was quite bigger then I expected. It has been expanded quite a lot through the years.

 

When I finished exploring, it was at around 10 PM and I decided to go to sleep. I had a fan blowing into my face all the time and my arms were really uncomfortable as they were floating. I got up at 6 AM, and still tired as ever made myself some coffee and ate my breakfast. The food was floating everywhere, but after mangling with it for about half an hour, I somehow managed to finish it. I asked Steve - one of the astronauts - what we would do today, and he just said that I'd have to fix some modules on the A1 sector. I followed him to the A5 sector, where most of the tools were. He gave me some wrenches, bolts and nuts. We were taught about this by our professor Victor. It was a pretty simple fix, but I guess Steve was busy with other work.

 

I stumbled across all the modules to A1, sometimes with the toolbox open and the bolts flying everywhere, but luckily I managed to catch them all before they got anywhere.. I hope so, atleast. I finally found the module - a big metal box that controlled some of the solar panel rotations, but since we had so many solar panels, this problem wasn't really urgent, or so I'd seemed, what other reason could there be? I changed some of the chips inside the module and screwed back on the lid. The solar panel rotation seemed to work and now they were all facing the sun, providing the necessary power to run the ISS.

 

After the module repair, I returned back to A5 and put back the tools. It was weirdly quiet, only soft humming sounds of the machines nearby were my company. I stumbled across all the modules until I finally found Steve again. I asked where'd everyone go and he said that they were just training for something. Shouldn't they have been trained on Earth? - I though, but I just asked whether there was anything else for the day. He said no and I went to bed, as I barely slept last night.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Milky Way