Techless

What are you willing to sacrifice to win?

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

The Scene

Brooz3 wobbled out of the terminal chicane into his last lap. With just one eye, he’d misjudged the depth of the switchback. Again. He fought his light cycle back onto the center of the beam. With grunt, he cranked the throttle wide open into the straightaway. He knew without a glance the holographic leaderboard showed he was losing.

“Six seconds behind Nagastorm’s record,” Pip said unhelpfully through his auditory implants. “You could recover that time using both your—”

“Shut up, Pip!” he snarled at the A.I. in his ear. “I’m not using the fake eye.”

Scowling, Brooz3 viciously shoved the bike into the first of seven turns on the hardest track he’d ever raced. He wanted to curse at his personal assistant. But that wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t hurt Pip’s artificial feelings no matter how hard he tried. That’s why he’d named it after the most annoying, sunshiny hobbit in the 2037 reboot of Fellowship of the Ring.

Pip blatantly ignored the command to be silent. “That’s the closest you’ve ever cut that turn. Nice job! Only five point three seconds behind.”

The light cycle screamed down the next straightaway toward the clubhouse. The stink of overheated metal and smoldering insulation filled his helmet. He couldn’t afford the maintenance cost that he was racking up. But he couldn’t stand the thought of her gloating one more time.

Brooz3 risked a quick turn of his head for a glimpse of Nagastorm. She stood framed in the glaring light of the second story glass observation lounge. Her Medusa-painted helmet cocked on one hip of her form-fitting green jumpsuit. Brooz3 could almost feel her disdain, biting her lip, willing him to lose.

“You’re gaining! Still three point six seconds down,” Pip said. “You’re lighter, but she can muscle the turns better. You need your—”

“Shut—”

“I know,” Pip cut in. “You also know I won’t. Let me turn on your other eye so you can cut the rest of this time off in the corners before the chicane.”

“No!” he shouted. “You don’t understand.”

Leaning over so far, he could’ve kissed the track, Brooz3 scraped pegs all the way through the next series of turns and straight stretches. Everything blurred past. The world around him was just streaks of color now.

“It’s just an asterisk,” Pip said in a wheedling tone. “It’s legal. You still win with the eye!”

The motor of the bike whined to the top of its red line in the final straightaway. Brooz3 tucked himself tighter against the overheated engine cowling. He hyperventilated on purpose to get more oxygen into his brain. The smell of machine parts pushed past their safe operating limits almost gagged him.

“How close?” he demanded.

“You could do it if—” Pip hedged.

“How close?” Brooz3 screamed.

Pip voice didn’t sound sunny anymore. “Point nine seconds.”

The chicane loomed ahead, approaching at warp speed.

“I could turn it on as a safety override,” Pip reminded him.

He imagined owning the top of the leaderboard. Then he could gloat over Nagastorm the way she’d always mocked him. Every racer would know he was better.

Except for the asterisk next to his high score: *Assistive Technology Used.

Nagastorm had two working eyes like everybody else. Everybody but him. They wouldn’t care that he’d only used his tech to get binocular vision and depth perception. All that mattered was the shameful asterisk.

“No, Pip,” he muttered. “Command directive: Disengage safety overrides.”

Pip’s tone was curt. “Confirmed.”

The mouth of the chicane yawned and swallowed Brooz3 and his bike.

He tipped all the way over, sparks flying from the pegs as he zoomed into the opening curve. His contacts smooched up against the edge of the beam, but not quite sliding all the way off.

He could do this!

Yanking hard, he slalomed through the middle of the S-curve and banked the other way. He leaned out wide, calculating how close he could cut before he lost the beam and toppled.

Then the light cycle slid out from under him.

Track rash screamed up his arm. The bike wobbled, threatening to kick up and flip into a full-blown tumble. Somehow Brooz3 clambered up on top, desperately trying to keep the bike sliding on the beam despite the pain.

After the dead bike ground to a stop just over the finish line, he sat there, dejected.

His best time ever flashed on the big leaderboard.

Still in second place. By a quarter second.

But there was no asterisk in Nagastorm’s eyes when she ran out onto the track.

Ignoring the leaderboard and the bike, she asked with real concern, “Are you OK, Brooz3?”

The Scene Fundamentals

This is a 779-word one-ish-character conflict scene (alright, fine, it’s a two-character scene) written in third-person past tense with free indirect style (a.k.a. limited, close, or deep POV). The point of view character and protagonist is Brooz3.

This scene could fit into a larger story like a novel as the Global Climax of a cyberpunk thriller, a sci-fi courtship, a worldview maturation tale, or maybe even a society epic. It could also function as the Global Turning Point or, perhaps, the Global Inciting Incident of stories in some of those genres.

Objects of Desire: Brooz3 wants to beat Nagastorm’s all-time high score on the hardest track without using his prosthetic eye.

Origin/Setup: Brooz3 has a cybernetic prosthetic in one eye but wants to beat Nagastorm’s high score without earning an asterisk for using his assistive tech augmentation. Brooz3 exits the second lap already behind his planned time budget.

Inciting Incident: Pip suggests enabling the prosthetic eye in order to win.

Turning Point: Going into the final chicane, Brooz3 will not be able to safely navigate the zigzag unaided and still beat Nagastorm’s time.

Crisis: Will Brooz3 use his legal prosthetic tech to overcome his disability in order to defeat Nagastorm’s record despite the shame of the asterisk?

Climax: Brooz3 refuses to enable his assistive tech.

Resolution: Brooz3 crashes at the terminus of the chicane, wrecking his light cycle, injuring himself, and barely scraping across the finish line a quarter second slower than Nagastorm’s record. Nagastorm is in awe of his commitment to beat her and unexpectedly does not gloat over his failure.

Notes: I planned this scene as a Man versus Maze or maybe Man versus Environment. My thinking was to attempt to make a one-character scene interesting and engaging. [Spoiler Alert: it wasn’t.] The Man versus Nature archetype and its derivatives seemed like the natural (rimshot) way to do that. But I had an epiphany about MVN stories along the way. Those are ALL really two-character scenes. Either nature becomes personified and takes on the antagonist role as a full character OR the protagonist themself becomes their own antagonist in the struggle to stay motivated to overcome the environment. Which makes even the most elemental MVN-type scenes really Man versus Self—two characters. So, I just renamed Brooz3’s inner voice of caution Pip and gave up on the idea of making a one-character scene interesting, because they’re inherently not (in my not-so-humble opinion). Even Hamlet has Horatio to talk to, after all. Also, if I wanted this to really work as a Meet-Cute for an enemies-to-lovers courtship, I’d have to dial up Nagastorm’s relational concern and give Brooz3 something about her to be attracted to, despite his intense rivalry.

Why the 800 Word Scene Challenge?

I’ve coached many struggling students to improve from producing “just stuff that happens” to writing compelling, emotionally-charged, fully working scenes in just six weeks. Combined with feedback from a qualified coach or editor, this is the practice drill that makes the magic happen.

I’m a Story Grid Certified Editor and founding member of the Story Grid Guild. I’ve been helping my clients with developmental editing of their novels and screenplays as well as chapter-by-chapter scene coaching for their works-in-progress since 2020. I joined the staff of the Story Grid Scene Writing Workshop as a coach in mid-2024.

These practice scenes are here as public examples of what’s possible for you. With a little of the right kind of regular feedback, you can learn to create working scenes that will fit perfectly into a larger story complete with powerful Objects of Desire and all Five Commandments of Storytelling.

I do reserve the right to revise these practice scenes in the future, but in the spirit of full transparency, I’ll always publish them as separate versions starting with v0. (Yes, one of my alters is a software engineer by trade. Everything in life begins with the index zero.)

If you’d like to join me in the story gym (or story dojo, if that term calls to you), sign up for the Story Grid Scene Writing Workshop. Our students write new scenes from scratch every week. We don’t want you working on your passion project, work-in-progress, or the book of your heart because you’re too close to the words to do the reps (or kata) to learn the narrative skills and build the story muscle. It’s harder to see the story fundamentals when the words are too precious to you. Build the skills and muscle first in practice, then take your newly developed power back into your own work. In the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger (paraphrased), “If you want to win, you’ve got to do the reps first.”

However, working on random new scenes that are assigned to you isn’t for everyone. If you’d prefer the same kind of weekly (but more expensive) coaching on your own work-in-progress scene-by-scene, I’m available for hire. Book a campfire chat with the Book Shaman (me—or more accurately, one of my alters) and let’s see if we might be compatible adventuring companions. Paid subscribers of this substack will also have the same opportunity for their own scenes once a quarter.

And in the name of shameless, capitalist self-promotion, I also publish my own novels. I don’t write about the heroes you want. I create the monsters you need.

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