Do you get the feeling that 2020 is unraveling like a dystopian science fiction novel? It puts me in the mind of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I’ve been thinking of how I would frame a novel around the readymade plot in which we are all currently living. I’ll share a few of the opening paragraphs of a concept novel-in the style of Charles Dickens-and you can provide feedback in the comment section of what I did wrong, and where my comma splices and run on sentences are, and how there are holes in the plot, and how my idea is a little flat, and the style seems a little stiff and forced. It will be just like a college discussion board! I know you’re going to love it. You probably are tired of scrolling through FaceBook anyway. Let’s get started!
Book the First-Shelter in Place
I. The Period
It depended on who you asked. Some would have said that things couldn’t get any worse, some would have said that they never remembered things being so good. Millionaires were so common place that one might easily overlook the homeless vagrants they dodged each day on the way to work. Each week the restaurant manager threw away almost as much food as the food pantry manager distributed. We were healthier than we had ever been, and we were sicker than we had ever been.
There was a man with straw colored hair and a citrusy complexion in the oval office in Washington, and a man with straw colored hair and a clammy complexion at Number 10 in London. The established conventional press subtly mocked the men who in turn openly mocked the established conventional press. The opposition in America had tried and failed to remove the man with straw colored hair and citrusy complexion from the oval office, and were so set on the next election that little else was done in the way of good or bad on Capitol Hill.
There were debates where everything and nothing was said so loudly that no one heard. There were add campaigns so large that they failed to attract any followers. In United States of America, there was a great clamor for and against a border wall to the South; and in the United Kingdom, there was a great clamor for and against a border with the European mainland; all the while immigrants from everywhere clamored to enter either country at any, and often perilous, cost.
The fact was that we were all so firmly divided on nearly every point upon entering upon the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty that we can only describe the era by use of extremes. The result of the stalemate was that little was done, for better or worse, to alter the situation in the lives of every day people. There existed two worlds that only acknowledged each other through the safety of the internet, and we were all so happy to ignore the present situation that the noisome activities of our contended lives drowned out the sound of a dry cough in China.
Mostly From Memory 