A new day is dawning

And what a bright day!  I recently signed up for Script Frenzy, which is basically a one month (April) project to get writers writing.  The challenge, write a one hundred page script for movie, tv, or graphic novel, in any style or genre you want, as long as it follows the standard guidelines for the specific medium (that is, formatting of the pages).

I've got thirteen days now to figure out my concept, my format, my everything, and I think after a long day (hence the belated posting) I've come to the most obvious conclusion.  But first, I'll tell you my other ideas.

First I had thought of a graphic novel in the spec fic genres, something of a futuristic Gulliver's Travels, about a migrant worker's experiences in a Utopian (by my standards) society with parallels to modern Singapore and to some of the earned citizenship theories of Heinlein's Starship Troopers.  Don't get me wrong, I probably won't abandon this idea, even if it never becomes a graphic.  The idea of a young man struggling, failing, then struggling again in a foreign culture interests me, and it lets me wave my freak flag in talking about my pseudo-libertarian socio-political values. 

My second idea, this time a movie, is another one I don't plan on abandoning but can only let it live as a movie (All you fledgling directors reading this, gimme a shout!).  The story would follow a retired super hero (I had toyed with the idea of calling him nothing but "Awesome" for a hero name, suitably cliched for the satire I wanted to make) whose slipped into a bit of a dementia after all these years of menial jobs and dreaming of his glory days.  He finally snaps and begins fighting crime again, imagining his sidekick, his old allies, and even his old enemies.  Long story short, he'd actually save the day and die trying without really knowing it.

Alas, logic and reason gave way to these dreams of other projects, and I've focused on taking my current steampunk content and making it a movie script.  As I see it, if I can write a one hundred page script, I can easily turn it into a proper novel as I originally imagined it.  I'm playing with the title now, but as I expected a series to grow from it, I think I'll call it "The Void: Taleasia" with future installments being "The Void: XXX."  It will follow a young but haunted hero who fought, and lost, in rebellion against Barton Wod's unification thrust, and will end up discovering the secrets of the "Great Unifier."  Stay tuned, you'll learn more later.

Yup, a short and entirely informal post, but its almost midnight and I have other things on my plate.  Thanks for reading, and please comment as you see fit.

The Plot Thickens!

    And it thickens for a very good reason.  There is some debate about the number of plots, subplots, anecdotal plots, and all sorts of other plot related things you can put in a book.  It’s generally true that one plot isn’t enough, and in a Malthusian sort of way, it becomes more and more difficult to successfully intertwine additional plots with each new one you add.
    What I’ve come to decide upon – at least for my current project – is a few minor plots that wrap around the major plot, and this decision has mostly been influenced by an assortment of articles over at Fiction Factor. 
    I should correct myself now; it’s not really a major plot, as much as it is two major plots that are irrevocably bundled together like a strand of DNA, or a binary star pair rotating around a single mutual location.  The two main characters (who are conveniently also my protagonist and antagonist) will rotate around this central point and create the main body of story (which is just another way to say the main plot).
    That’s all well and good, I have a main plot concept that will continue to propel the story forward and maintain the interest of all my readers until some gripping and powerful climax and denouement.  But is that enough?

    This is where the question of subplots, secondary plots, et cetera comes into play.  Not all authors utilise these narrative elements.  I’ve recently decided to read Piers Anthony’s Bio of a Space Tyrant quintology, and like many memoir style stories, it has a singular plot and does not dither in elements of other stories.  It is true to a single guiding direction with little to no deviation.
    Many authors and storytellers, however, do integrate an assortment of secondary narrative elements.  Take for example the Star Wars Trilogy (yes, I am aware that I relate back to the Holy Trilogy frequently, but that’s because it has such a well known base).  There is one central – or main – plot: the destruction of the Evil Empire and the re-creation of the benevolent and democratic Republic.  The secondary plots though follow Luke’s education as a Jedi, Han Solo’s evolution from scoundrel to hero, the romance of Han and Leia, and the Vader Plot, or those elements pertaining to the saving of Anakin Skywalker.
    Not everyone will have thought about it, but those are the “big” secondary plot elements of the original Star Wars trilogy.  They all bolster the central plot (which is, in my opinion, the core purpose of secondary plot), and they all keep us interested in the story.
    It’s been suggested (over at Fiction Factor) that secondary plot is there to distract the reader, particularly that it exists to make sure that the reader never gets bored with the central plot.  Imagine Star Wars without the Han/Leia courtship, or without Luke’s frequent Force training.  It would be a one-hour long trilogy, consisting of two big balls exploding and a few witty quips.  Not worth the money, and certainly not enough to make a thirty year franchise cult.
   
    So, by adding these other elements, Lucas “thickened” his plot considerably, which for every nerd and fanboy is a great thing.  But when, for new writers and Secondhand Gods like you and I, is the plot too thick?
    Like most questions I pose in my blog, the answer is far too amorphous for a yes or a no.  The plot is too thick when it is too thick (tautological yes, but still true).  Like making a cake batter, you can accidentally add too much saccharin sugar or one too many eggs and make it far too thick.  But that’s why story plotting (an activity I plan on talking about in the next few weeks) is so important, because you can track the events in point form, and remove excess plot as needed.
    In my own opinion, there shouldn’t be more than four minor/secondary plots in any single novel (depending on the size of those plots, of course).  There is nothing wrong with a romance, a jealousy, an education, but it’s all taken in pinches and dashes of flavour, not pounds.  For example, contrary to popular belief, Lucas never did lay the possible Luke/Leia romance on thick, but it has it’s value to infuriate Han, and to upset him as well (this is not entirely a plot in itself, but serves my purpose).
    Personally, I intend on using a romantic subplot (with an espionage twist that’ll I’ll talk about another time), and the classic Education subplot, mostly because my story is resting heavily on the shoulders of the Hero’s Journey.  I’ll naturally sprinkle in some jealousy, and I am itching to try my hand at what I am going to call a “future plot,” specifically the use of a character(s) in this story to foreshadow plot in future parts of the story (read as sequels).  But most of all, I will make sure not to make it too thick.

    I rarely tell you what next week will hold, but I am going to today.  Next week I do plan on talking about the nitty gritty of “plotting,” that is, the act of making flow charts, graphs, or even just simple point form lists, of the sequence of events your story will hold.  I’ll even talk about some of the cool and interesting methods I’ve discovered.  See you then true believers, Excelsior!

How new does your story have to be?

    The short answer: new enough not to bore your readers with redundant plot lines and two-dimensional characters.

    This is a question I ask myself all the time, and to be honest, it’s probably also one of the biggest stumbling blocks in my work.  Every time I have a new idea, I ask myself “is this old hat?”  Sadly, I know enough about the medium I am working in to know that someone else has done it.
    Creating dragonmen, battle robots, heroes and heroines, and an assortment of worlds, religions, cultures and styles is a daunting task; every writer has faced it before (in fact, every artistic person has faced it, no matter the medium).  We have a grand idea, like some sort of pneumatically controlled, hydraulically powered armour suit and we tell ourselves “damn, Stan Lee did it, Heinlein did, and 80% of anime has done it” then we abandon the idea and never look back, even though it was, truly a great twist on an old yarn.
    Jude Deveraux said, “There are no new stories.  It all depends on how you handle them” and she is very right in saying that.  We know two people will fall in love in a romance, we know the hero will win the day in the epic; we can be assured that the sleuth will catch his crook and every dog will have his day.  We can be equally sure that robots, orcs and ogres, energy swords and spaceships, and all flavour of mage and shaman has been talked about at least once before us.  We should not, however, let that stop us!  Rather, we should be happy to build our works on the shoulders of our peers and make every last wordsmith before us be proud of us.

    It is a question of how you handle it that much is true.  For example, a program I watched about the events of Revelations, specifically the Anti-Christ, recently inspired me.  The concept of the Anti-Christ is an interesting one, because he will sell himself to the world as a great and benevolent leader, the best and worst of us will want to trust him, even though he hides great evil.  What an amazing character, and even more, what an amazing antagonist!  Its no wonder George Lucas paid homage to Revelations with the character of Palpatine, who was, for all intents and purposes, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
    You see there, though, I have had an idea, questioned its inherit newness, and found that recently someone else has done it.  Can I then, use the same idea to any new effect?
    Yes I can!  And I will!  Just because it was recently done in one of the most anticipated movie series of all times doesn’t mean I cannot put my own special twist to that sort of a villain.  My two faced antagonist will not be Emperor Palpatine, while they will be forced to share certain fundamental traits, they won’t be the same character.  For starters, my antagonist will not possess a wheeze.
   
    I suppose the original question has a logical derivative: How much can your work mirror reality in speculative fiction?  The only answer is this: AS MUCH AS YOU WANT!  In fact, you should use reality as much as possible because reality does create the strangest fiction.  Even in speculative fiction, where you are creating strange worlds and people to tell a story, the meat of reality is a fine inspiration.  Take for example Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, which is heavily influenced by the author’s time in the American Navy during the Second World War.  He created one of the most interesting socio-political war stories of the twentieth century, and did so using a backdrop that could have been the Pacific; all you needed to do was replace Klendathu with Tokyo, and Planet P with Iwo Jima.
   
    Again I have rambled, but hopefully made a point.  Standing on the shoulders of the creators who came before you is entirely acceptable in writing.  The sooner you can grasp that, the sooner you can abandon that gnawing sensation that it won’t be new (unless your hero’s name is Link Skyslinker, at which point, rethink that).