While I did a little work on "Bright Freedom" this week, I put more of my time into my
"The Disruptors" story. I
wanted to come up with some ideas for how they do their disrupting. I wondered
if I need their techniques to work in the real world.
"Bright Freedom"
Over the last few years I came up with a variety of ideas
for my "Bright Freedom"
rewrite. This week I started to go through those notes and transfer them to my
chapter files. I got about half of that done. Some of my chapters have a lot of
notes, while one chapter is now so short I will need to come up with more
material, or incorporate it into another chapter.
"The Disruptors"
In my previous post about "The Disruptors" I said my goal was to have my
protagonists use non-violent means to persuade the terrorists to also use
non-violence. (see: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/team-non-violence-versus-team-violence/)
The problem I ran into right away, was that I really didn't
know what kind of techniques they could use to accomplish that. This week I
came up with some ideas, then did a little research on the internet to find
what kind of techniques could be used.
Most of what I found so far is related to how advertizing
works. While not quite what I had in mind, I think I can draw on some of those methods.
It has already given me a few ideas for plot elements. The outline of a story
has started to form in my mind.
A question that came into my mind is "Do I need to have
techniques that would actually work?" My first impression was that I do
need to have the characters do things that would work. On further reflection,
what I need is plausible ways the heroes can succeed. I can't have them do
something like hit the bad guys with a magic wand and have that work. Their
techniques need to sound like they might work.
In many stories where the hero uses violence, much of the
violence is very unrealistic. Violence isn't as effective in the real world as
it is in action movies. I've read many reviews that point out this problem with
action movies; like the revolver that can shoot 100 bullets before the hero
needs to reload. This hasn't affected the popularity of these movies.
I believe that the important thing is to have the tools my
heroes use work in the story. They need to have the dramatic effect that the
story needs. A long wordy debate might be the most effective way to change a
person's mind in the real world, but in an "action" story, it would
be a bore. What I need to keep in mind is that I want to create a story that
entertains, not a thesis on how to persuade people to change their minds.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
No comments:
Post a Comment