Tag: novel

World Building From The ‘Impossible Scenario’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the more interesting aspects of the Impossible Scenario is if you give the demands of every major nation — especially the ones with nukes — equal weigh, it really is almost impossible to figure out. Or, put another way, someone’s gotta backdown.

The obvious venue for all of this horse trading would be the UN. So, that brings up a really interesting situation. In fact, it was my complete ignorance of real world UN politics that caused me to stop working on this as the basis of a huge novel series.

I think as a screenplay you could pull it off. And I have a few screenplays and short stories I’m interested in working on when it comes to this concept, but I have four novels I’m working on at the moment. As such, I just like letting off steam writing about this because of how interesting it is.

So, here’s the issue — you have an empty (and lush) earth-size planet that aliens are willing to zap a huge number of humans to (say, 1 billion), but there’s a catch — once humans are zapped there, we’re pretty much on our own. The more we’re on our own, the more interesting story would become because you’re effectively doing The Martian, but on a macro scale.

Anyway, I love thinking about the actual nuts and bolts of how you would settle a planet at the very beginning if you had some very strict conditions. One condition being the planet would be part of humanity’s “homeland” and, as such, We’re All Human. Also, no more war. And, lastly, there would be some sort of global government and civilization.

One wild outcome of all of this would be you could potentially have “Cowboys in Space” whereby you have a story involving cowboys on this new planet doing cowboy stuff but with modern communications equipment. (I think them riding horses would be cool.)

The obvious use of the USA as the basis of such a homeland’s government and civilization is very easy to use (if you’re appealing to American audiences) but everyone else, all 7+ billion people on earth would fucking hate the idea. Which, of course, is conflict you would have to address, which brings you some plot to work with.

There is a lot you can do with such a universe. You could do a movie or novel about making the decision to accept the alien offer. Then the lead up to being zapped. And then what happens once humanity got there. It would be epic.

And there remains a possibility that I will write a short story set in this universe at some point soon. But I love, love, love these four novels I’m working on. So, it will be a while. We’ll see.

They Shoot Writers, Don’t They? — For The Next 3 Months I Plan On Being A Dry Drunk


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For various reasons, I’ve made an informal deal with myself — I’m not drinking until I can walk again. I feel pretty comfortable that this deal will be successful because of my relationship to booze.

I will admit that I’ve abused alcohol — especially when I was in South Korea — but I’ve also gone huge spans of time no drinking for various reasons. Usually, because I was simply too poor to buy any.

What’s interesting is, I have been forced to take painkillers because of my severely broken right ankle and — to date — I don’t understand how someone can get so addicted them. So far, the ones I’ve taken have either given me a tiny buzz or no buzz at all. I’m WELL AWARE of how easy it is to become addicted to painkillers and I treat them with a great deal of caution and respect because of that.

But I’m hoping it won’t come to that.

I’m hoping in three months everything will return to normal and I can laugh and laugh at this stupid freak accident that threw my life for a loop in a dramatic and unexpected fashion.

I can go back to drinking rye and ranting on Twitter, making everyone think I’m nothing more than just another Internet crank.

Idle Musing About Developing A Screenplay


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m essentially using the method of development for the structure of a big story that I have formulated over the last three years to now work on a screenplay. The scifi movie concept is set in the far future and has is very much a warning about both the threat of MAGA and global climate change.

One thing I’ve noticed as I actually develop this screenplay’s outline is how much more native and organic outlining a screenplay is for me than a novel. There is a very strict rule when developing a screenplay — more screen time equals more attention directed to a concept or theme.

This also exists for novels, of course, but the whole dynamic of how you handle this is different for a screenplay. Because it’s on the screen, there are all these tricks you can use to really stress to the audience in a subtle way that this or that thing is REALLY IMPORTANT.

As such, I find myself flexing a different part of my creative mind as I go through the scenes of the outline. It’s a lot of fun.

And now that I’ve severely broken my right ankle and I’m literally unable to do anything but sit in front of my laptop every waking hour, it’s at least possible I’ll be able to focus a lot more attention on my various side projects over and above the four thriller novels I’m working on.

All that is the goal, at least.

I’m struggling to find a silver lining in this dumb, freak accident. And, if nothing else, if I ever reach my “potential” I can look back and all of this will be a funny story I can tell on the TV talk show circuit.

So, I Severely Broke My Right Ankle: A Coming 3 Month Spurt Of Creativity


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, I severely broke my right ankle a few days ago and just came back from surgery today. As such, I’m at the beginning of a three month period where I pretty much can’t do anything but just sit on the couch with my laptop.

I’m thinking that this is now a great opportunity for me to throw myself into a wide range of writing, developing and reading. Unless I’m missing something, I can now have a very, very intensive spurt of creativity where I focus on an array of novels, screenplays and short stories that I have either been working on already or have been lying around in my mind.

It is only three months, of course, so there’s only so much I can do. But I’m hoping that I given how far I’ve gotten with thriller one and thriller three, that this added focus will help me really plow through the less developed thrillers two and four.

I’ve already figured out part 1 (three chapters) of Part 1 of the second thriller. It’s meant to be an almost literal retelling of the events leading up to, and immediately following the fall that precipitated this dumb accident in the first place.

And my involvement with the medical field as a result of this freak accident has me thinking AGAIN of the pandemic scifi novel I’ve been mulling. It’s a great concept that would be written in a first person POV. I first thought the concept up when I was in South Korea, but it’s only been since COVID19 struck that I’ve realized I could do something with it.

The concept is meant to make the idea of a pandemic very personal and intimate in a number of ways. Having gone through a real pandemic has made me understand a number of practical issues that would have previously escaped me.

Broken Ankle Update


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, things are moving forward with the clusterfuck that is my severely broken right ankle. As of this moment, we have some sense of when the surgery will be. And, as I have mentioned, as long as I can continue to write, read and develop these novels I’m working on, then I’m ok.

I kind of knew Something Bad was about to happen leading up to this event, I just didn’t know it was going to be this. There are two ways of looking at this. One way is that now that Something Bad has happened to me on a personal level, I should be in the clear for the future.

The other way of thinking about it is, bad things usually happen in threes and I’m fucked.

Anyway, I definitely feel I’m in a New Era of my life now. There’s no going back. I’ve officially gotten hurt as part of the development of these novels, the least I can do is actually wrap them up so my pain won’t all be in vain.

Of Screenwriting & Novel Development Management


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a pretty good system for management of the development of a big storytelling project established. It’s taken me about three years to get here, but I finally have a pretty good system.

One of the reasons why I find myself interested in screenwriting is it should be easy for me to retool that system from writing novels to writing screenplays. The hardest part at the moment will be learning Final Draft. The actual development of the story is far easier than that I know how *I* develop a longer-style story.

I already have a general idea of the plot of this screenplay and its themes tap into my general, lingering rage over MAGA that the same dynamic that was at work with the initial development of the four thrillers I’m working on should be in play with this screenplay.

But, as of the moment, all I have for sure down pat with the outline is the very beginning and the climax. Other than that, I’m at a loss right now.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of learning Final Draft. But I hope that I’ll be so excited with a finished outline that when I get to the point where I want to start writing on the screenplay, I’ll be able to use brut mental force to learn Final Draft.

At least, that’s the hope.

I have a huge amount going on creatively at the moment, which is what I want. The main focus has to be on the thrillers, though. It’s just, sometimes, I need to let of some steam doing something totally different that uses a slightly different part of my mind.

I’m still very interested in fashion photography, but getting the equipment has been far, far slower than I expected. So, for the moment, occasionally dabbling in screenwriting is it.

Of Gender Determinism & The Screenplay I’m Developing


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, I’ve got my McGuffin and I’ve got a general plot. Now, the thing I’m struggling with it how I might toy with gender expectations with the characters I’m thinking up in my mind.

I like the idea that that my Hero has a lot of “potential” as the story opens — much like Luke Skywalker — but his Princess starts off as a tough as nails broad who helps him become the man he always could be. I guess that’s pretty much every Hero’s Journey, but I like to think I’m following the old saw of “Tell an old story in a new way or an new story in an old way.”

I’m really trying to follow the beat structure of A New Hope with this first attempt to write a screenplay. Since I have four –4! — thriller novels to work on, for the time being, this screenplay is just what I work on when I need to burn off some steam.

I’m not going to get too wrapped up in making the first draft perfect. In fact, at the moment, I don’t even know how to use Final Draft at all. That’s something I’m going to have to work towards. But I do actually own it, so once I figure out how to use the software, I can hopefully just sit down and start writing.

But to get that point, I need to flesh out the outline I have. I really like how with a screenplay you have some very strict beats you need to meet. I find that very freeing. I don’t have to re-invent the wheel. I just think up my beats for the outline and when I get to them, I pull the trigger.

The universe I’ve come up with is pretty cool. The screenplay itself has elements of Alien, Logan’s Run, The Time Machine, Star Wars and any thriller movie where a McGuffin is involved. But it’s also meant to have a pretty strong romantic element to it which would be the heart of the story.

But I have noticed, even this early in the process of development, that by making gender expectations more modern, the story is flowing a lot easier. The trick is, of course, not to be so “woke” that no one wants to watch it. You see, Olivia Wilde, there is this thing call “subtext” where you can preach all you want to and not alienate every CIS white male in existence.

As such, my Hero starts off a lot like Luke Skywalker, but by the end of the story he and his love interest throw themselves into the future as equals. I think audiences will really like that.

I hope.

Of Alien’s Ripley, Star Wars & Modern Storytelling


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The character of Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise was originally written as a man. I find myself working on my first screenplay and in my mind, I’m using Star Wars as my guide for structure.

But as I really begin to get into the development of this story, I realize that following the Star Wars plot too closely just doesn’t make any sense for modern audiences. People have grown so accustomed to a tough as nails woman in stories that they might feel any variation from that in a story like I’m working on is rather quaint.

Having given it even more thought, the idea now is we will have a Hero like in Star Wars, but the context is different. Or, the spin on how our Boy Hero becomes a Man Hero is different than you might expect. If things work out the way I hope, the story will have a lot of heart.

It’s a real relief that I’ve figured out how to pivot what I know about developing a novel to doing the same with a screenplay. It really speeds up the process of getting myself to the point where I can start to attempt to get past the learning curve of Final Draft.

But my main focus is going to be on the four novels I’m working on. It’s just occasionally, I need to distract myself from working on the novels so I can look at them with fresh eyes.

The Martian, But On A Civilizational Scale


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For the better part of a decade, I’ve been fascinated by the following scenario — what if a Galactic Empire came to humanity and said, “Earth is doomed. We’ll give you a second chance in your own ‘homeland’ of a few habitable places in a different solar system, but there’s a catch. We will only zap you there, you have to use your existing technology and unite enough establish a planet-wide government.”

This would be an amazing opportunity, of course, but the story would deal with how difficult it would be to unite humanity to do such a thing. If you treat all humans as equal — as we should — how do you figure out how to unite the very, very diverse and divided humanity?

Given that under this scenario, the Galactic Empire would be zapping a huge number of people to this new solar system — in the hundreds of millions — it seems to me that the only way to do it would be to use the United States as the basis of your new, planet-wide government, culture and civilization. The reason is, the United States has a huge population and history of being a nation of immgrants.

Where the story gets really interesting is you could use the whole thing as a proxy to talk about fucking cocksucker MAGA idiots who want to turn the United States into white Christian ethno state of “blood and soil.” So, part of the plot would be how Americans balanced this amazing opportunity with the natural inclination of MAGA to flip the fuck out because even though say, 200 million Americans would settle this new planet, 400 – 600 million non Americans would also settle the planet as well.

So you have much gnashing of teeth about how the “American way of life” would be in jeopardy.

And this doesn’t even begin to address the whole bootstrapping issue. You could have all these really interesting scenes of how to start a global economy from scratch — it would be The Martian, but on a global scale.

Anyway, I don’t have a plot at the moment. And I have a lot of other stories I’m working on — four thrillers at the moment — but this continues to be fascinating to me because of how difficult and complex it is.

Hollywood, Here I Come(?)



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is slowly beginning to dawn on me that now that I know how *I* handle a huge creative storytelling project, that it’s easy for me to piviot from developing and writing four thriller novels to working on screenplays.

I don’t intend to stop working on these novels, but I definitely have my eye watching a lot of YouTube videos in the near future so I can figure out how to use Final Draft (even though, according to the way the guys on ScriptNotes talk, that’s now passe.)

The biggest thing I’ve learned about telling a great story is how important development is before you even write a single word. So, once I get to a point with the four novels I’m working on that I feel comfortable shaving off some attention from them, I’m going to begin to do development on a few screenplays to see what I come up with.

Screenplays are different from novels because by definition if it’s on the screen, people are nearly forced to accept it’s real. You don’t have to spend 20 pages explaining why this or that thing happened — you see it on the screen, it exists. As such, I feel like I can engage in more elaborate flights of fancy because I don’t have to spend on this time researching things. Also, with a screenplay I have a very strict number of scenes to work with — NO MORE THAN 120!

I know the general structure of good storytelling to the point now that it is at least possible that writing screenplays — after doing development — will be much, much faster than working on novels. There are certain beats that you have to hit during the course of your 120 scenes and as a trained journalists, I love, love, love tight structure.

It makes things a lot easier, at least in my mind.

You can be as creative as you like, you just have to stay within the established conventional wisdom of structure.

But this is all very speculative. I continue to be very hard at work on four novels. And I idly think about writing some short stories when I need to take a short break from working on the main project. And, yet, I’m so absolutely consumed with these four thrillers that I doubt anything will come of that.

We’ll see, I guess.