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Story Writer Instructions

Add your story to this collection

Published onApr 17, 2022
Story Writer Instructions
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YES… you can add your own story to this mix. Really.

It’s not difficult, once you write the thing.

To get started:

1) Get a free membership on PubPub: <https://www.pubpub.org/signup>

2) Fill in this form to join the Fifty-Two Community: INVITATION FORM

ANY questions: ask me on twitter: https://twitter.com/fyftytwo

I wrote Jeremy’s Story…. you write any story that works for you!

Jeremy Stapleton is a fictional character telling his story from a distinct perspective. One story where there can be so many more. Hop on and give your own character their voice.

The Setup… Time Leaps Backwards

What we know is that around Noon UTC on September 2, 2019 the planet Earth jumped back in time to around 9 a.m., UTC August 19, 1967. This time leap included the planet and also the solar system and beyond. All orbiting and exploratory human-made space vehicles, satellites, landers, space stations, even the Pioneer and Voyager spacecrafts disappeared. So, we do not know the full spatial extent of this event. Since time simply returned to a prior state, the only traces of this event happening are the intact memories for this time interval belonging to individuals living on September 2, 2019 and born before August 19, 1967 (more precisely, born before March 19, 1965). These are timedrifters. There are about a billion them.

There is no good science to explain this time reversal. All we have are conjectures and disputable (usually non-falsifiable) theories about this. It does seem to disprove that time and entropy are simply connected. Apparently, memories are quanta. Who knew?

YOU are probably writing a story told by one of the timedrifters.

This is fiction. “Your story” is the story of your protagonist. It might have some resemblance to you, the author, but it is not actually autobiographical. It might be something completely from your imagination. If you (the author) were around in 1967, you can take what you remember of 1967 and use this to color your landscape. But you can also invent 1967 from your own imagination, and old movies and TV shows.

There is an embarrassment of information about 1967, 1968, 1969, etc. on the internet, in dozens of languages. Help yourself. Wikipedia and Google have you covered. It’s crazy. You can search for “What kinds of radio were popular in 1969” and get a whole list of information, with photos.

You can also use GPT4, Bing, or Bard to help you discover anything you want to know about the late ‘60s.

You are NOT making up a different world. You are writing this about Earth, where 52 years have been erased, except for the memories of those who lived them. Earth is what it was in 1967. It is exactly the same 1967 as it was in, well, 1967. Your character gets to play in the real world and make it new going forward. It’s your character who gets to change the future.

There are a billion timedrifters. Your story is just one. You-the-author might have been born after 1967. That’s fine. This is fiction, not biography. You do not have to be a geezer to contribute.

Remember that your main character is also going back in biological time. Their body is fifty-two years younger. Their mind now includes everything it held on that day in August 1967, plus all of the recollections, the intellection capacities, the desires, and the emotional palate of who they were in 2019. Their face in the mirror hides more than it shows.

Make your story a hero story. It’s 1967 and your main character has a lot to offer the planet. And they have a lot of friends from 2019 who are now really young, like they are. Perhaps this hero story is about a community, not a person.

The scope of the plot is up to you. You might want to repair the town you grew up in. You might want to cause a ruckus that will shake the world. It’s your story.

You can use the content of other stories in the collection to add interest/weirdness to yours… Maybe think of your story as a chapter in a larger novel… It’s important to acknowledge this in your work when you borrow content. And it’s great to create something together that’s bigger than its parts. And you can send the author a note saying you are using their work… start a conversation.

One Resource: Wikipedia’s decadal overviews

The 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s

The 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s

The 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s

… You get the idea.

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