Starting the plot

One of the problems of beginning work on a story is that it is so easy to get bogged down in details. Who is this character?  What happens here?  How do I get between this scene and that?  What sort of atmosphere should I go for?  It's very easy to feel as though the whole thing is too complicated a mess to get control of before the firt key is ever struck.

The answer to this is to remember that when you start a story you don't begin with characters or moods or scenes or any of that.  You begin with the plot and that is very simple and direct.

At its most basic, a plot is just a matter of stating what it is that you want your protagonist to achieve, what stands in his way, and what the end of your story is–and not necessarily in that order.  Many a classic story has been written backwards.  In 1945, John Nanovic called this the "Triple-O Way", which stood for Objective, Obstacles, and Outcome.  Nonovic claimed that all you need to so is figure out what the protagonist wants (Objective), why he can't get it (Obstacle), and who it all turns out (Outcome).  Once you have those, everything else is mere elaboration. 

I'm not sure if this is the best way to approach a story, but it certainly is one of the most effective.  I hate to think of how many ideas I've had that seem really great, but I could never find the right way to express them.  The reason was that there was no dramatic reason why what I had to say was worth saying, so I would spend months or even years trying to pound square ideas into round plots.  The answer is that I had the process backwards.  Sure, the purpose of the work was to get my message across, but I needed the framework to put the message in .  That framework was the plot and until I'd settled on that, the message would never fit anywhere comfortably.  This is particularly true where the story was something very structured like a farce or a murder mystery. 

The key is to keep it simple, keep it focused, and and figure out what stands between hero and home.

Once those three are sorted out, the rest will follow.

Quote of the day

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.

Robert E. Howard

The Haunter of the Ring by Robert E Howard

Quote of the day

The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed. 

William Gibson

Review: Colossus

If you've ever had a bad day of lost files, crashes,  and dropped Internet connections and began to suspect that your computer was plotting against you, consider yourself lucky.  Things could be worse–a lot worse.  Nowadays there's a lot of talk in tech circles about the Singularity; the point where the curve of technological development becomes so steep that it is literally hyperbolic.  This is the point where computers develop not just human intelligence, but superhuman intelligence, technology for man is reduced to a spectator sport, and all we can do is look on as our silicon offspring inherit the Earth.

Amazingly, many advocates of the Singularity regard this as a good thing and imagine a time of peace, plenty, and lots of new gadgets raining down in an never ending downpour of novelty as our robotic overlords look after our every need.   But there is another point of view as expressed in the 1966 novel Colossus by D F Jones, which presents the reader with modern technological man's worst nightmare:  the machines taking over the world and regarding man as little more than a nuisance to be tolerated–for the moment.

The plot of Colossus is relatively simple.  The United States at the turn of the 21st century tries to end the Cold War by building an impregnable supercomputer called Colossus that is given absolute control of the American nuclear arsenal–the idea being that the machine's infallible judgment will provide the country with a perfect defence  while reassuring the Soviets that America is incapable of aggression.

Then something goes wrong.

No, the Soviets don't shout "Yippee!  Dinnertime!", gobble up the rest of the world and then subject Fortress America to an economic blockade that leaves Washington with the choice of surrender or starve.    That's because for some insane reason the Soviets already have a duplicate of Colossus with exactly the same programming.  Needless to say, the two computers get in contact with one another over the objections of their creators, form a single entity, and use their nuclear warheads to enslave mankind.

If you've seen the film version, Colossus, the Forbin Project, you've already had a very good synopsis of the basic plot, which centers on the character of Dr Charles Forbin, the creator of Colossus, who becomes the machine's prisoner, ambassador to the human race, and most dangerous enemy.  From the very first page, Forbin has doubts about his brainchild and suspects that there is more to it than a highly sophisticated defence system.  His emotional journey is that of a brilliant, driven, isolated man who is so frightened by the Frankenstein's monster he's let loose and frustrated by his inability to get the President of the United States to see the danger for himself that Forbin is on the verge of a breakdown.  Jones handles the pace of the story very well; never letting the action flag for a second and weaving dialogue and description into a seamless whole that carry the plot along in a way that builds tension on top of tension as Forbin and the President battle for position as most powerful man on Earth.  So dense is the action that the reader often forgets that the entire story takes place over only three days and that situations unravel in a matter of minutes.

Less science fiction novel than techno-thriller, Colossus is a tale of professional people under extreme pressure as they see not only their machines but their very institutions suddenly subverted and turned against them.  Forbin himself is a very interesting character, much more nuanced and insightful than his cinematic counterpart, and it is ironic that the pretense of his assistant Cleo Markham being his mistress as a way to allow Forbin to pass messages to the resistance actually sparks the romance between them that Forbin was unwilling to initiate himself before the crisis. 

One interesting fact that came out years after the book's publication was that D F Jones was one of the team at Bletchley Park that worked on breaking the German Enigma codes during the war and as part of the effort built the world's first modern computer named, ironically, Colossus.

How Jones got that title past the censors while the existence of the original machine was still a top secret is an... I shall refrain from using the word.

A book in a month: Day 8

Word count: 2632

Spent the day catching up on all the business stuff that I had to let slide while I was ill.

I'm going to have to rethink this whole exercise.

Quote of the day

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

P. D. James

P D James interview

A book in a month: Day 7

Word count: 2632

Feeling better, but that's only speaking relatively.

I wonder of Tolstoy had days like this.

What's He Doing In There?

A book in a month: Day 6

Word count: 2632

No change from yesterday.  It's 19:30 local time and I've recovered just enough to make this entry and I am obviously in no state to do any serious writing unless it's a chapter that involves a stream of consciousness account of fighting a fever and the irony of having a thrown-out back and diarrhea at the same time.

Where's my notebook.

Deathworld

A book in a month

Word count: 2632

This is a turn up.  I've thrown my back out, I'm running a fever, and it took me ten minutes to write this sentence on my netbook while lying flat out.

Mourners are requested not to send flowers.

Quote of the day

Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.  

Richard C. Trench