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.

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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

A Brief Thought About the Fermi Paradox

When I looked into some of the ancient astronauts stuff a few weeks ago, I came across a lot of discussions of the Fermi paradox. I think I've come up with a possible explanation that I haven't seen before.

The argument made by Enrico Fermi was that while it would take millions of years for a technologically advanced civilization to explore the entire Milky Way galaxy, this is not very long compared to the billions of years that the galaxy has existed. Therefore, if a technologically advanced civilization existed in the Milky Way galaxy, then they should be here by now.

A number of suggestions have been put forward to explain why we see no evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations. This range from, we are the first and only civilization to they are hiding from us. You can read about some more proposals on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

A few days ago I came up with another explanation. Some time ago I came across an article that suggested that there could well be planets that are more suited to life than Earth (see: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140117-exoplanets-superhabitable-planets-space-astronomy-science/). I thought, if extraterrestrial civilizations arose on a planet more suited to life than Earth, they might very well look at Earth as uninhabitable and pass it by.

Our space programs have sent probes to planets that we don't think are inhabitable. But, would a civilization that had visited many solar systems still want to explore uninhabited planets? I suspect that if we explored other solar systems, that after a period where we did explore uninhabitable planets, we would come to see that as a waste of time. I've made the assumption that life on an Earth-like planet is sufficiently rare that an extraterrestrial civilization is unlikely to find a case before they give up on Earth-like planets.

An extraterrestrial civilization could have explored many Earth-like planets and never found one that was inhabited. If they saw Earth from a nearby solar system, they might well conclude that there wasn't any point to actually visit. They might think: if you've seen one Earth, you've seen them all.

The main objection I see to this idea is that it assumes that the civilization had a low level of curiosity. For a civilization that had decided to undertake interstellar travel, this seems unlikely. I'm not sure we can discard the idea based on this objection, especially since, as of now, we can't prove it one way or another.

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My Own Conflicts

My wife's health has taken a turn for the worse and making her life the best it can be is my primary goal. I still want to work on my films and stories.

My feelings about my work are conflicted. On one hand, I feel like any work I do takes time and effort away from my wife. On the other hand, I feel it is important to have a focus on positive things. I do gain satisfaction from my work that I believe will give me more strength when my wife needs it. Nevertheless, I still feel guilty when I work on my projects.

I have decided that I will try to do some work on my projects. Naturally, with my main focus on my wife, I will need to interrupt my projects frequently. I will have to choose my projects carefully, so that they are projects I can drop and pick up again. I already have many unfinished projects.

Many artists use the trials in their lives as fodder for their work. I can't do that now; maybe I never will. My post last week generated a higher than normal level of interest, so maybe I can take direction from that.

The important thing is to seek happiness and contentment as much as we can. In the past when I had troubled times I used to say to myself, "Find an excuse to be happy everyday, even if it was only for a minute."

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

New Ideas for Transportation Planning Stories

Although "The Barrier" is still a work in progress, I have started to think about other transportation planning stories. I have two ideas that I want to consider. Do either of them appeal to you?

Defending What You Don't Agree With

The first is about a transportation planner who is assigned to develop a project he sees as unnecessary. At first he tries to convince people it is the wrong idea, but he is forced to continue. Because he isn't sold on the project himself, he doesn't try hard to make it work. This gets him in trouble with his bosses.

Threatened with dismissal, he makes a more concerted effort. His new approach is more effective at selling the idea. Unfortunately, others start to see the proposal as his pet project. This leads to personal attacks on his character. Ultimately the politicians reject the project. He sees this as a personal failure. Perversely, he also sees it as a personal success, since he was opposed to the project.

The essence of story is conflict and I think this idea does provide several levels of conflict. The protagonist has internal conflicts with conflicting goals. The protagonist faces a conflict between self preservation and professionalism. The protagonist faces interpersonal conflicts on two side; proponents of the projects and critics of the project. The situation would force the protagonist into some personal growth to deal with the conflicts.

Monitoring Program

This idea isn't as well developed as the previous one. It comes from my personal experiences. The last major project I worked before I left the field was to develop a program to monitor the implementation of the transportation plan. This generated a lot of conflict.

While I was only assigned to the project in the last few years of my transportation planning career, I had advocated for the idea from very early in my career. My earlier efforts were not very effective.

I wanted to put this all behind me, but I recently saw an article by Bent Flyvbjerg ( see: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/bent-flyvbjerg and http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk/ ). While I was still at work, I read some of his work that criticised transportation planning and forecasting.  The article, "How Planners Deal With Uncomfortable Knowledge" (see http://eureka.sbs.ox.ac.uk/4662/ ), touches on some of the conflicts that I ran into.

The problem with this idea is that I find it "too close for comfort." Many people would see this as a good reason to pursue it. I feel it would be dangerous because I would lose sight of my goal to tell an entertaining story.

When I made "Line of Taxis" (see  http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/line-of-taxis ), I drew from personal experience as well. In that case I chose to focus on the emotions that I felt and place them in a different context. I think this made it a much better project. It forced me to focus on the emotions of the characters and not just on the plot.

The essential conflict of the story is that some people don't want to have their work monitored. They see that as a personal attack. I never saw it that way and didn't really appreciate why they were so resistant. The sad fact is that all too often attempts to monitor people's work are a thinly veiled attempt to blame them for the failures of the system.

This has been a big issue in the education field, where standardized tests are often used to blame teachers. This only diverts attention from other problems where the effort would be much more effective. I think the effect of this approach has been to punish honesty and reward dishonesty.

W. Edwards Deming (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming ) is often cited as the source for this approach. This is a misunderstanding of what he said. In his books he says that it is the system that is the cause of most problems. It is rarely the individual that is the problem.

The challenge for the protagonist of the story is to overcome the fear people have. Internally the protagonist would need to resist the idea that the resistance he faces is grounded in evil intent. Of course, in the real world I wasn't able to accomplish this, so it is hard for me to see how to do it in a realistic way in fiction.

Now, how I would create a situation in a transportation planning context that addressed these issues, but not deal with a monitoring program, is a challenge in itself. The only thing I can think of is to have the protagonist be assigned to review another person's work. The emotional interaction and attitudes would be similar.

This requires further thought.

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