Tanked: A Novella

TANKED is a novella set in a futuristic world in which fish have become the dominant species and humans are kept in bowls of air. This story follows five children (8-16 years old) on their escape attempt to find the Land Above. While light hearted in nature for the target audience of about 4th grade, the story does cover a variety of themes including religion, perseverance, and climate change. The sibling pair that serves as the two main characters work as a foil between the two ideals of this journey. The younger, Goldie, represents hope and is always optimistic about the escape working while the elder, Swimmy, deems herself as more of a “realist” and often points out the slim likelihood of the events working out in their favor. The strengths of this piece largely involve the characters and their dialogue while a weakness is the scenery descriptions and where the story ends. This story is not over, but instead will one day have a part two. Some difficulties encountered in this piece included the scale of the humans to the fish in scenes like the one in which the group rides the back of a dolphin as well as setting up the world in which people could accept this new world as a futuristic earth. Both of these issues were worked on, but can still persist in some readings of the novella. This project will be worked on in the future to adapt it into a screenplay to accentuate the strengths of the piece and complete the story.