Eventually we had no other course but to accept we’d been built by German engineers.
I’d really hoped that one line would carry me on into something drastically interesting. I’ve even sort of saved it for a time when I could capture the outpouring that would certainly follow.
But it chokes me.
I get hung up on that fact that I don’t know the least bit about German engineers (nor Japanese scientists–who briefly held that creatorial slot while I was down on the Germans). Also, I kept using ‘recourse’ in my head as I was working the phrasing out. After a couple passes I couldn’t remember if recourse was even a word. Just now I typed ‘choice’ then edited it to ‘course’ and all seemed well. Or, at least, weller.
I was having trouble tying the knot between their realization that they’d been built and who might have built them, but then ‘accept’ just flowed right in so I was good. Which leaves me still sorting out the damn Germans.
Assuming this phrase of mine would lock down the first sentence of a longer work it loses all it’s heft when you make up an entity to replace the Germans. As readers, we all know what a German engineer stands for: quality, excellence, capability, and reality. We know that German engineers can’t build anything sentient–since no one can–but if they did that sentience would be premium grade. So the twist is in the conflict between reality and what I’m writing. As soon as I replace them with elven mages, dwarven smiths, or Atlantean crafters the soup thins to broth.
So now I’ve got to learn enough about German engineers to make this worth following up on or find a way to make the Germans less crucial.
300 words on day 492