Reflecting on creative writing piece - Essay Example

Creative Writing and Revision. Creative Text The Goldilocks Planet. Till looked up from his homework and glanced at an image forming on the screenabove the breakfast bar. “… discovery of a Goldilocks planet has just been announced at the southern space observatory…” intoned the newscaster. “Experts estimate that the exoplanet measures about one sixth the size of our own globe and is probably made of solid rock with sufficient gravity to hold on to an atmosphere and liquid water,” she continued.

The image solidified into a sphere and acquired wisps of cloud. As the newsreader listed physical properties, so the image gained new features: texture (rough), density (high), a circular orbit round a dazzling star. As his mother approached, Till dropped his eyes automatically back to the simultaneous equations he was working on. “When I am older” he thought, “and when I am done with school I will train to be an astronaut and go out looking for Goldilocks planets across the galaxy.” Till’s eyes wandered away from the numbers and looked out of the window.

The sun sat fixed and still in his place, casting his cool red glow over the world, as if to say, yes young man, one day you will train for the fleet and join the Goldilocks expeditionary force in search of worlds beyond even your imagination.Self-reflexive comment. The object that I used as my starting point was the phrase “Goldilocks planet” and an artist’s rendering of a discovery announced on 30th Sept 2010 of the first truly earth like planet which has just the right conditions for life.

I decided I would write about this from the point of view of the new planet, not from earth, but I wanted to keep this fact in suspense, and create an impression at first that the writing was from a human and earth- bound perspective. I tried to make the opening as normal as possible, so I chose a kid sitting at a breakfast bar, in front of a tv screen, half doing his homework and half watching tv. My first draft contained phrases that referred to time, for example, “has been announced this morning” and “One day, when I am done with school” but when I read the text over, I realised that time is all relative to the sun and the earth, and that in a different solar system there would not necessarily be days or mornings, since this new Goldilocks discovery apparently faces its dwarf star sun all the time and does not rotate.

I took out these references and made them general. Then I checked for consistency and changed all the color references too, making them applicable to a spectrum dominated by red. I learned that science fiction is full of pitfalls and that consistency is paramount. I think the suspense aspect was carried out well, and the dialogue worked too. I am not happy with the characterization but in this short piece I think it is adequate. ReferenceCook, Lynette (2010) Artist rendering via the national science foundation.

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