4 Things I Learned From "The 89th Key"

I feel that "The 89th Key" was a good learning experience for me. I've organized some of  my thoughts about what I learned.

The Outline

I have used outlines for most of my stories and all of my movie scripts. With "The 89th Key" I put more effort into the outline. I think I put as much effort into it as I did into the first draft and the rewrite.

This extra effort paid off for me. It made the first draft go much smoother. I feel that it is at the outline stage that the hard work of writing happens. One way to look at it is that the outline is the real first draft of the story, and the first draft is a rewrite.

If you can work out the structure and action at the outline stage, then you can focus on the actual wording when you come to write the story. Many of the problems I ran into were because I hadn't done enough work on the outline.

I want to work on how I create an outline. I have in the past developed a grid in a Excel spreadsheet to help me develop my outline. With "The 89th Key" what I wrote was more like a treatment or short story version of the tale.

Character Definition

One thing that helped me a lot was that the characters in Doc Savage are well defined. They are not necessarily complicated characters, or even very realistic. But, they have distinctive characters and I found it easy to imagine how they would behave in different situations.

This definition of character made it much easier to write the story. At times the characters seemed to come to life and all I had to do was type out what they did.

I realize that most of the characters I create are not as well defined. I can feel it when I have to force generic characters to do something. There are exceptions; the characters in "The Barrier" are all quite distinct.

I want to develop a check list of the types of things I need to define for each character. In the past I've focussed on general descriptions and didn't go into depth. What I think may be a better approach is to consider how they would behave in different situations. For example, if some one attacked them, would they fight back, surrender, run away or try to reason with them.

Relationships between Characters

This is something I've never given much thought to. A good example in the Doc Savage books is the relationship between Monk and Ham. Their rivalry is a bit cartoonish, but it adds something to the stories.

When I develop characters I need to consider how they relate to one another. Do they like each other? Do they trust each other? Do they hang out together after work? What do they talk about when they aren't talking about work? What do they have in common?

These relationships can add colour to a story, but can also help drive the story forward.

Like with the characters themselves, I want to come up with a check list of the types of relationships that characters can have. As I develop each character I can work how they relate to the others.

Number of Characters

The Doc Savage books have six on-going characters. Seven if you include Doc's cousin Pat. There is usually one main bad guy with a bunch of nameless subordinate bad guys. In contrast I usually have just the hero and his sidekick, plus an equal number of bad guys. "The Barrier" was an exception to this.

What I noticed was that when I had more good guys to work with, it was easier to come up with things to happen in the story. On the other hand, I found it hard to give some characters anything to do.

I think that while you can have too few characters, you can also have too many. What the best number of characters is, I am not really sure. If I planned to do a series of stories, I would want to have a few extra around that could play a bigger role in later stories. For a stand alone story, they would just be in the way.

I'm sure that there is more for me to learn, but I really feel that this little project has been one of my more fruitful projects.

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I Finally Brought A Long Held Dream to Fruition

Long ago I decided I wanted to write a Doc Savage adventure. Now I finally did.

You can download and read it from my website: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/

The 89th Key - A Doc Savage Adventure

A strangely familiar sound brings death rather than reassurance. The quiet contemplation of a charity concert is broken by the sudden violent kidnapping of Warren Evans, a prominent businessman. Doc Savage and his men have only hours to rescue him.

Read the HTML version: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-html-version/

ePub version download page: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-epub-version/

MOBI version download page: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-mobi-version/

PDF version download page: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-pdf-version/

The Story Behind the Story

When I was in high school I wanted to write a novel. I played around with some ideas, but they never went anywhere. At the time I read a lot of Doc Savage books and was quite familiar with the characters. I decided that it would be easier for me to write a book if I wrote it as a Doc Savage story.

So, during the summer between high school and university I started on my own Doc Savage adventure story. That was in 1972 if you must know. I called it "The Smiling Corpse". I managed to write a bit more than one chapter; about 2,200 words altogether. At that point I gave up because I felt that I just wasn't ready.

Over the last few years I have developed my writing somewhat and written some longer stories. I have 3 or 4 novella length stories that I got stuck on. A couple months ago I decided that maybe I had reached the point where I could probably write my own Doc Savage adventure, so I did. I'd used "The Smiling Corpse" title for a different project, so I developed a new plot and title: "The 89th Key".

In part, my objective was to fulfill a long ago ambition, but I also thought it would be good practice for my own writing. I think I did learn a lot from the experience.

I wrote an outline and then started the first draft. I completed the first draft two weeks after I started on the outline. I did a couple more drafts and had the final version done a month later. In the rewrites I fixed grammar, wording and some plot inconsistencies. I didn't make any major changes to the story.

I felt the story turned out pretty good. While I've read quite a few Doc Savage books, my knowledge of the characters and settings falls well short of encyclopaedic. Connoisseurs of Doc Savage may be disappointed.

The book was shorter than I would have liked. It came in at 25,700 words, which makes it a novella. During the original run of Doc Savage, the average length was 38,500 words, but this varied quite a bit. "The Land of Terror" at 56,000 words was the longest. "Fire and Ice" at 25,200 words was the shortest. So, while my story is on the short end of the range, it isn't the shortest.

Legal Issues

While I intended to undertake the project as a writing exercise, I did want to share it with other people. That is a bit of a problem. I looked into what the legal status of a book like this is, and if I could make it available.

In Canada, where I live, the copyright of a book lasts for 50 years after the death of the author. Other countries have that set at 70 years. Lester Dent, who wrote most of the Doc Savage adventures passed away in 1959, which would make the ones he wrote in the public domain in Canada. However, another consideration is that the name Doc Savage is a trademark. Currently, the publisher Condé Nast owns that trademark. I assume this would include integral elements of the stories, such as the other characters.

Another consideration is the growth in "Fan Fiction." Many people write their own stories based on characters and make them available. There are many Harry Potter fan written stories for example. I found some discussions of the legal status of fan fiction that I think is relevant.

Strictly speaking, fan fiction would be considered a copyright violation. However, some authors and publishers tolerate and sometimes encourage fan fiction. This is because fan fiction can help market the books they sell. This is purely at the discretion of the authors or publishers. I found some Doc Savage fan fiction on the Internet, which suggests to me that it is tolerated by the publisher.

From what I read about what is acceptable in fan fiction the main consideration is that you can't sell it. I am hadn't intended to sell it anyway, so I don't mind this restriction.  Another consideration is how widely available the book is. Generally speaking, most fan fiction gets very little distribution. I don't expect that this book will be widely read.

Of course, should the owners of the Doc Savage trademark  ask me to remove my book from the Internet, I would quite willingly comply. Although, I do think it is to their advantage to allow it to be available.

Since my intention was to have this be a writing exercise, I wouldn't be too upset if I couldn't share it with others.

What's Next

While I am happy how this book turned out, I would like to write a book that I can sell. In earlier blog posts I talked about an idea I call "The Disruptors" which I could do in the same way as this book.

I think the most important lesson I learned when I wrote "The 89th Key" was how important it is to develop your characters. This book is very focussed on the plot, but when you have very distinct characters like in the Doc Savage stories, the writing becomes much easier. The characters give life to the story. Otherwise, you just push them around like a bunch of toy soldiers.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Plot Development, Characters and their Monikers for "The Disruptors"

I worked on the plot and characters for "The Disruptors" this week. I've developed a bit of a process to organize this part of the writing.

My plan had been to focus on "Bright Freedom", but this week I got side tracked into "The Disruptors". I feel bad that I put off a project, but I felt moved to work on the other project.

Plot

I started to prepare an outline for the story. It is something of a formula. I want to have 16 chapters, so I decided that I need to have 16 "cliff hangers" to end each chapter. I came up with the 16, but some of them are quite weak. As I continue to work on the project I feel I can come up with some better ones. One of the things I've learned about creativity is that you need to come up with many more ideas than you use in the end. If you want 16 good ideas, you need a lot more than 16 ideas.

Characters

I started to develop characters for the story. I came up with a group of good guys and a group of bad guys. I identified what kind of role each of them will play in the story. Some of them don't have much of a role to play, so maybe I can use that to generate more ideas for plot elements.

I have some vague physical descriptions for three of the characters, but haven't given much thought to the other characters. I want to come up with more description of  what kind of people they are and how they behave. I find that helps me with dialogue.

Names

I gave each of the characters names. So far I just did first names. In my mind I see the names as code names, so I'm not sure if I need to have family names.

I developed the process I have to create names a little more. Because I've heard of film makers running into problems with legal issues over uncommon names, I want to use common names. I also want to avoid the names of people I know, unless I ask them first.

I found a list of the frequencies of male, female and family names reported in the U.S. Census. I used this to prepare a short list of the most common names. In the past I just went through the top names and picked ones I wanted to use. I want to avoid similar sounding names, so I try to avoid names that start with the same letter.

I've refine my process this time. To start, I created a list of the five most common names for each first letter. That was a problem for some of the letters, like Q, which have only a few names. Then I used a random number generator to pick one name from for each initial. I picked names from that list.

Theme

Much of my effort so far has been formula driven. I haven't given too much thought to the underlying themes of the story. I'm not too concerned about it though. The theme is inherent in the nature of the story. My past experience has been that the theme comes across, even I don't make a conscious effort to put it in.

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Do my hero's actions need to work in the real world?

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

Character Changes in "Bright Freedom"

I worked on my novella, "Bright Freedom" this week. My goal was to develop the characters more. I came across some old notes from three years ago. My concept of the story has changed since then.

For the most part , I developed some background for the characters this week. I had thought about the characters before, but I wanted to get my ideas down on paper. I gave some thought to the personalities and motivations of the characters, but much of my effort was to create physical descriptions and behaviours. These, of course, are intended to give clues to their personalities.

This exercise allowed me to reconsider the characters I have in the story. It helps focus the story if I can keep the number of characters to a minimum. I tend to build up the subplots at the expense of my main story.

So far, I have eliminated two characters and combined two others into a single person. I might be able to eliminate another character and combine two other characters into a single character. If I go through with these changes, it will cut the number of characters from 16 to 11. In addition I think I can reduce the importance of a few of the characters so the focus of the story is more on my protagonist, Bright Freedom. I can cut the number of "important" characters from 9 to 6.

The last time I really worked on this story was three years ago. When I started over, I knew I made some notes for changes I wanted to make. I thought I had lost them, but this week I found them. I had some good ideas I can incorporate into the story, but I can't use a lot of the material I came up with. My concept of the story has changed quite a bit.

My plan was to keep this rewrite to a revision of the existing material, but I wonder if I need a more drastic rewrite. One story that comes to mind is about when Robert Louis Stephenson wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". When his wife read his first draft and pointed out how it could be so much better if he gave it more depth, he burned it and started over from scratch. I don't want to go that far.

I think I have what I need to start the actual rewrite, but still feel some reluctance to start.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

"Bright Freedom" Rewrite: The Hard Part

I've left my story "Bright Freedom" unfinished for a long time. This week I took a stab at a rewrite. I find that the rewrite is harder to do than the first draft.

My first attempt at this story was back in 2010 and early 2011. It was initially a movie script. I didn't plan to make the movie myself, I thought it as more of a learning exercise.

In 2012 I decided to rewrite it as a novelette. My first draft was largely a conversion of the screen play into a prose format. I finished that in July, 2012. I intended to leave it for a few months and then do a rewrite. It is now just a few days short of three years. A lot has happened in my life since then and that affects the way I look at things.

Part of the reason I have struggled with this story is that the main character is a woman of color. Those of you who know me are aware that I have very little experience with being a woman or of color. I worry that I will completely miss the essence of the character, and offend people with a flat stereotype.

On the other hand, in my story "A Walk in the Snow" (http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/a-walk-in-the-snow/), the protagonist was a person of color who had immigrated to Canada. I had some positive responses to that from people who had that experience.

Another challenge for me is that the protagonist is strongly motivated to help victims of domestic abuse. That makes me uncomfortable. In my story I use it as a device to motivate the protagonist rather than as a central part of the theme. My story is a sort of action adventure and I worry that will trivialize the problem. On the other hand, I think I portray the protagonist as someone who work to stop it.

I will definitely need to get some feed back from people who can identify with the protagonist and the problems she faces.

I focussed on the story outline/structure this week. For me, the most important part of the writing is the outline. That, combined with background information, should take up most of the time.

My first step was to create a new outline from the existing text. It turned out that I had already done that some time ago, which saved me some time. Over the last three years I have learned more about plotting a story. I found that useful when I revised the outline. It was easier to see when the story missed something, and where I had material I should cut.

The outline had 43 scenes to start with, and I ended up with 61. I moved some scenes around to where they made more sense. Some scenes will need to be completely redone.

Another problem I noticed was that when I converted the screenplay, I didn't change the tense. For example, the text says "She sits down" when it should say "She sat down." I'll need to go through the story and fix all of those.

Over the last three years I've written a fair number of notes about changes I want to make to the story. Before I go too far, I will want to review those in more detail.

All in all, I have my work cut out from me.

I could use some help to find some people to read a draft of my story. Ideally I need a woman of color who immigrated to Canada and works with domestic abuse victims. So far as I know, I don't know any.

If you can put me in touch with someone who fits this description, I would appreciate it.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Team Non-violence versus Team Violence

In my on-going effort to accomplish little by starting too many projects, I've started work on an action adventure book. Over the last few weeks I think I've come up with a reasonable premise for the book.

My Inspiration

I've wanted to write a novella or a short novel for quite a while, but haven't gotten far with my attempts. A while back I read an article on Cracked.com, "6 Ways to Keep Terrorists From Ruining the World", that gave me an idea I could build on. (see: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-to-keep-terrorists-from-ruining-world/)

The author calls terrorists "Team Violence" because they try to reach their objectives with violence. If we react to terrorists with violence, all we've done is join Team Violence. The terrorists have won.

As I mulled over this Team Violence concept, an idea for a story, or maybe a series of stories started to form. The story would be about Team Non-violence, who used non-violent methods to divert terrorists from the use of violence. Their goal would not be to prevent the terrorist from achieving their objective, but to convert them to Team Non-violence and pursue their objective in a more constructive manner.

My working title is "The Disruptors", but that could change.

Team Non-violence

I see Team Non-violence as a secret international organization that infiltrates and disrupts Team Violence.

The agents would not be naive enough to think that if they are just nice to the terrorists, that they'll turn into peaceniks. At the same time, they would want to avoid the use of violence because to do so would undermine their long term goal. I can see that as the core of the internal conflicts that the agents must deal with.

The agents would be in constant danger, since the terrorists would kill them if they are exposed. In fact the terrorists might be kill them even if the don't learn who they really are.

Team Non-violence would be made up of two types of agents. The first type would be permanent agents, who run and support the operations. The second type would not be permanent and would infiltrate the terrorist groups. The infiltrators would only be involved in a single operation because it would be too dangerous for them, and the organization, to risk multiple operations.

The basic method they'd use would be to "trick" the terrorists into reconsidering their use of violence. The agents couldn't just come out and try to talk them into a change of heart. That wouldn't work. The terrorists would need to feel that they'd come to their realization on their own.

Now, I think the biggest challenge I would have is to come up with plausible techniques they could use. Maybe some of the agents are former advertizing people, who know how to manipulate people subtly.

Team Violence

I'm reluctant to base my Team Violence groups on any particular terrorists group, but they would need to seem like a real group. The ideals of Team Violence should come across as not necessarily that bad. The malevolence would come from their desire to use violence to impose those ideals on other people.

It might make it easier to come up with a plausible story if the ideals of Team Violence are really in conflict with the methods they espouse. In the story Team Non-violence would work to force Team Violence to become aware of the contradiction.

One possibility is for there to be two Team Violence groups who are in conflict with each other. Team Non-violence would try to disrupt them both. I'd like to portray the groups in conflict as really having the same ideals. The only difference is over who gets to impose them on the rest.

Maybe in the background of my story, there would be a secret Team Violence who support or encourage terrorist groups of all stripes. I doubt this would happen in the real world, but it would be a useful element of a fictional story. I would need to give them a motive to do so that made sense. It is also a bit too much like some of the secret world government conspiracy theories. That isn't an idea I would like to promote.

Parallels and Other Inspirations

I see parallels between this idea and some books and TV shows I used to enjoy.

The Doc Savage books are the type of adventure stories I had in mind. In this series, a group of adventurers with high ideals travel the world to help people who need it. While they often resort to violence, they try not to kill their enemies. Instead Doc Savage sends criminals to an institution that uses medical procedures and training to turn them into law abiding citizens.

I haven't seen the later "Mission: Impossible". movies, but in the original TV series, the team rarely relied on violence. Like my idea, they used various kinds of deception and trickery to manipulate their adversaries.

In the "Man from U.N.C.L.E.", the back story is that U.N.C.L.E. is a secret international police organization that tries to stop an international criminal organization called THRUSH. U.N.C.L.E., unlike my Team Non-violence organization, was not a non-violent group, but there is a parallel between THRUSH and Team Violence.

Where to Next?

This idea needs a fair bit of work before I can start to write. As I noted above, I need to have some plausible techniques that Team Non-violence. I need to develop some background for Team Non-violence: history, tools, organization and so on. I need to develop characters, their personalities, and skills. I could have several Team Violence groups and I need to do the same for them. Then I can move on to sketch out some plot ideas.

I'm enthusiastic about this project right now, but I have so many other half done projects that maybe I should get some of them out of the way first. 

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog