Mental Turmoil Aboard Flight 103

The journey through my early writing efforts has brought us to my eighth grade English class, which as I explained last time placed an emphasis on both writing and revising. Today we're going to look at a piece of fiction that was more heavily revised between drafts than anything else that year, though unfortunately not wisely.

I have strong memories of writing this story and being quite pleased with it. Apparently it was my favorite of the works I produced that year, because I chose it as my entry in the collection our class published (Xeroxed) at the end of the year. Encountering the story again now, I found it odder than I remembered, but also duller.

I'd recalled this was a very short story, unfolding in the space of a single limited scene, but what I hadn't remembered is that the assignment was actually "Write a Story Opening That Shows Mood". That explains why this feels like the setup for something more interesting, though it doesn't explain much else.

Mental Turmoil Aboard Flight 103

The airplane glided across the runway, then left the ground with a sonic boom. A man gazed longingly through the window at the city of Chicago.

"Would you like something to drink, sir?"

George Loring looked blankly at the stewardess for a moment. He blinked and came to his senses. "Oh," he stuttered. "I-I'll have a Miller Lite."

"I'll need to see some sort of identification, sir," said the stewardess.

George, a man well into his thirties, was very flattered. "Why, thank you," he said, pulling out his license, "that's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day."

After the stewardess left, George sank back into the plush seat and sipped his beer. He glanced through the stack of papers on the table in front of him. Most of them were forms that he had to fill out to get on the spaceship. "They can put men on the moon," he muttered, "but they can't eliminate the paperwork."

He picked up a pen and started writing his name, address, date of birth, eye color, hair color, and shoe size. Once he arrived at NASA, the papers would be processed, registered, examined, and re-examined. He knew the whole system by heart. In spite of all the hype, going to the moon just wasn't all that much fun.

"We are experiencing some turbulence," announced the computer pilot in an unnerving monotone.

"I can see that," said George, though his teeth, as his beer splashed onto the table, narrowly missing the important documents. "God, I hate traveling!"

"This isn't as bad as it seems," George thought. "I should be grateful that I am going to the moon. Most people would die for the chance."

"I wish they would," said George's cynical side. "There's a terrible population problem."

"Come on," said the optimist George. "Look around you. Don't you feel lucky?"

George looked around at the plane. It was tastefully decorated in silver and blue, with all the latest airline technology.

"No," said George, "I feel like an idiot talking to myself. But yes, I suppose that I am lucky, having an all-expense paid trip to the moon to do boring experiments." He sighed. "Oh, well. Anti-gravity is nice."

Before George could continue his schizophrenic debate, the computer announced, "We will be landing at Quayle National Airport in Cape Canaveral in five minutes."

My mood while reading this passage was mainly "baffled amusement", but my guess at the mood I intended to show with the assignment was "boredom", which I also experienced at points. My pre-writing notes worksheet indicates that the mood I wanted to convey is "strained". I'm not sure I succeeded, or if that's even a mood.

The science fiction aspect of the story is intriguing, but the worldbuilding is minimal and poorly thought out. I love that in this future where a computer flies the plane, George is filling out forms using paper and pen, though I myself wrote the story on a computer. I also like when George checks out "all the latest airline technology", because I wasn't afraid to let readers paint the picture for themselves. And yes, I refer incorrectly to "anti-gravity", but this was an inexplicable change from the more accurate "zero gravity" in the first draft, as we'll see.

What stuck with me most about this story in later years was that it contains what I believed at the time to be biting social satire, or something. You probably noticed that George's world includes the Quayle National Airport, which made it a terrifying dystopia from the vantage point of January 1989, as the much-mocked Vice President Dan Quayle took office. Oh, for the simpler times when Quayle was the worst politician imaginable!

It's less likely you picked up on the then-current event reference in the title of the story. In December 1988, the month before I wrote this, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed in a terrorist act over Lockerbie, Scotland. I recall thinking my use of the flight number was edgy and somehow clever, but I can't figure out what I meant by it.

My teacher commented on this composition, "established mood more though dialogue than description". I guess that was noted as a flaw, since I didn't follow the assignment appropriately, but I'd strongly argue there's nothing wrong with this technique in general.

I expect I received similar feedback on my first draft, because the original version of George's flight is significantly different. It functions as a complete story rather than the opening it's supposed to be, and maybe my teacher told me to take out all the plot and focus on conveying mood. I'm only speculating, because unfortunately there are no markings on the manuscript or anything else to explain the changes.

The first draft includes more of what I'd remembered across the decades, and while it's still not an amazing story, I think pretty much everything about it is better than the final version and its tedious inner dialogue.

"Would you like something to drink, sir?"

George Loring looked blankly at the stewardess for a moment. He blinked and came to his senses. "Oh," he stuttered. "I-I'll have a Miller Lite."

"I'll need to see some sort of identification, sir," said the stewardess.

George, a man well into his thirties, was very flattered. "Why, thank you," he said, pulling out his license, "that's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day."

After the stewardess left, George glanced through the stack of papers on the table in front of him. Ever since he woke up early this morning to catch this plane, everything had gone terribly.

First, his car wouldn't start. Then he got stuck in the awful Chicago traffic. He tore through inspection to catch the plane, only to find that it was delayed for two hours. Now, only minutes into the flight, the pilot announced that they were experiencing turbulence.

"I can see that," muttered George, as his beer splashed onto the table, narrowly missing the important documents. "God, I hate traveling!"

When the plane calmed down, George tried to put his anger into perspective. He took out a piece of paper and decided to list the pros and cons of the trip.

"Trip To The Moon" he wrote at the top of the page. He made two columns, and labeled them "Pros" and "Cons". "Cons first," he thought. "There are enough of them."

Before George could start, a loud beeping noise came from under his seat. An old lady across the aisle stared at him as he pulled out his briefcase. George opened the insistently beeping case, mentally slapping himself for not turning down the volume. With an angry hello, he answered the phone.

"George," boomed the enthusiastic voice of his boss, "great business trip, eh? Your first visit to the moon?"

"Fifth," George said.

"Well, that's great, just great. I tell you, it's a great planet, er, moon. Now listen, I have an additional assignment for you. I'm sure you'll have time."

"Yes," thought George, "I have one free hour for sightseeing, but I'm sure I can squeeze it in somewhere."

George scribbled down the assignment and hung up, turning down the ringer volume. He looked back at his list.

"We will be landing in Quayle National Airport in Washington D.C. in five minutes," announced a computer.

"Everything," George wrote under Cons. He looked at the pro side for a minute. "I like zero gravity," he wrote.

With a sigh, George settled into his seat and buckled the safety belt.

I wish my one eighth grade example of serious revision served as a better argument for the power of revision. Instead, maybe it's an example of how stories sometimes suffer from being over-workshopped.

My pre-writing notes contain even more interesting details that didn't make it into the story, as so often happens: "George misses his girlfriend" "George's boss praises himself for George's assignment" "George thinks, 'What I ever saw in the plastics business, I'll never know.'" I may have to return to George and his ill-fated business trip and try a new draft of this story.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders at io9 lays out The Difference Between a Great Story and a Shitty Story: "It's the little details that will trip you up. Small inconsistencies can make your world feel flimsy. But, too, tiny character moments and little bits of emotional resonance, in between the big incidents, can do a ton to make people buy stock in your world and its people." (Thanks, Andrea!)