Science Fiction, Double Feature...

Unit: Creative Writing 212-2 – Genre Shortfiction.
First seminar writing

Okay, so not quite a double feature. More like the first 10 minutes of a movie, but I have the song (opening credits of The Rocky Horror Picture Show) in my head at the moment.

So, creative writing doesn't look to be as bad as I thought it was going to be. I did really well last semester (much owing to someone who was willing to thoroughly work over my writing assignments for me) but I thought I was going to be stuck with a tutor who doesn't like my style of writing this semester. But, fortunately, that tutor is not taking us and instead I (and the rest of the class) has permission to write fantastical fiction if we so wish. I'd like to try out the horror genre, actually, but we shall see how that goes.

We pretty much just looked at how science fiction works as a genre, and all the codes and conventions that you would come to expect from it. Thus, we were given the first 10 minutes of Blade Runner to watch. In all, we decided that it could fit under the detective/crime genre just as well as it could sci-fi. The short of it though, we had to write an appropriate character sketch of Deckard (Harrison Ford's character) in 10 minutes. Here tis. (simply my interpretation of the character, who remains the property of his creator)

Bright lights flickered through the window, reflecting against the shine of water on his brown coat. Or, at least, you could think it brown, just like his hair, but the neon blues and reds that washed over him made it hard to tell.
Hard, watchful eyes moved from a damp paper – used in a futile attempt to keep the rain away – to the vendor over the street. Lines of set anger and resignation softened a little as he realised he was finally being beckoned over, but returned with a scowl as he contemplated the short journey through the rain.
Nevertheless, he plunged himself into the street, his very defiance of the rain warding him more than his soggy newspaper or the masking umbrellas everbody else carried.
He was not one of that flock. He was the brown against the black, the weathered lines of experience amongst the faceless, the defiance against a crowd of the same.