What's It All About, NaNo?
Nov. 6th, 2006 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jetpack_monkeySo. Nate has 25,000 words. But what of?
First of all, the whole thing is set in 2072. That isn't always apparent, because large chunks of the story are a pastiche on 1940s Humphrey Bogart movies.
Olly Henricks is a detective. He's bigoted in every possible way and he really doesn't learn and become a different or better person over the course of the novel. If anything, I keep adding more foibles. He's racist, sexist, homophobic, and has a serious chip on his shoulder about "the rich and fabulous." Weirdly enough, he has an English BA from UCLA and would prefer to be a writer, if he was any good.
Olly narrates the story and right up front he lets us know what's up -- everything's going to end and this is the story of how he knows that.
As his story opens, he receives a call from his estranged son Jody. Jody's heading up to the Cloud Nine orbital party platform for Spring Break and is really nervous about his first trip into space, so he calls his dad to tell him that he loves him. Olly mocks his son and gives him a bunch of crap about never calling. The call doesn't end well.
Olly then tells us that Cloud Nine is owned by Derek Treblehorn (better name to come later) and that it's basically a rave in space. It's a curiousity because most space resorts are really expensive, but this one is no pricier than an Earthbound tourist trap. It's built for young people to experience a taste of space while they're still young enough to be unable to afford it.
Treblehorn can afford it -- he's developed software that's on nearly every computer called Butterfli. Butterfli is software that observes what you do on your computer, where you go on the Internet, what you write in your documents... and the creates new programming molded to your lifestyle. Post to a lot of chess boards? It's a chess program. Blog about how disorganized you are? It'll become a personal organizer that is set up in such a way that you're more apt to stick to it. Olly finds the entire idea creepy, but most everyone else seems to dig having software tailored to them.
A woman comes to the office and hires him to find her runaway daughter, Catherine, who is running around with three hooligans who happen to be the sons of three of the most powerful people in California -- the man who controls the solar battery industry, the movie executive, and the woman who owns entire towns. Of these, the son of the third is reportedly the worst, but they're all pretty crappy people. Drugs, sex, scandal. The usual.
Olly heads out to the hoity-toity rich boy college where the sons (known as the Brain Trust for their propensity for thinking with their trust funds) attended before dropping out. After doing some recon, he learns they used to run with Simon Wint, a computer geek who ran tech for all their more complicated con jobs. Wint also kept them in good grades while they were still in school.
Olly impersonates a Secret Service agent and meets Simon. He tries to coerce him into helping by saying they'll prosecute for some vague government insurrection (because he figures somebody with Wint's rep has probably done something). Simon, however, is not dumb and knows who Olly is and agrees to help him. Seems that the boys latest scheme involves blackmailing Derek Treblehorn for sleeping with the underage Catherine, and their first attempt to get at Derek lead to a complete dataloss for Simon's systems. The Trust ditched him and he's keen on getting back at them and Treblehorn.
Up in Wint's apartment, Simon prepares Olly for the technological barriers he's going to face if he goes up against Treblehorn, including a complicated device called Kokoon which is like Butterfli for Butterfli -- it molds itself to the program's self-altering operational matrix and nullifies it. Since Treblehorn's systems all run on Butterfli, it may be very necessary.
Olly points out that Simon's got way too much high level technical knowledge -- it seems unreal. Simon reveals that he's a result of the Class of '42. In 2042, a government experiment was conducted to optimize the genetic outlay of babies by altering the reproductive systems of the parents before conception and then fiddling with the baby in the womb after. It was only a moderate success and only one person from the class of '42 has made anything of himself -- Treblehorn. Interestingly, though, Wint's mother actually suffered a miscarriage the first time, but a side effect arose. The reproductive systems of both Wint's father and mother were locked -- they later had two boys three years apart and both are genetically identical. Simon is one of those boys.
Simon sets Olly up with earbuds and contacts -- they're wired so that Simon will see what Olly sees and hear what he hears, as well as be able to give him vocal instructions in highly technical situations.
Getting back to the office, Olly finds he has a visitor. The solar magnate is sitting at his desk, and after mocking him a bit, tells him to drop the case. Olly refuses and has the living crap beaten out of him. The solar magnate leaves a check for double what his client is paying. Simon, who saw the whole thing, calls Olly's secretary and has her take him to the hospital. Olly's prety banged up, but he's determined to continue with the case. He has Janice cash the check while he heads to San Diego -- two of the Trust are there to corner Treblehorn at a party he's throwing in honor of the new San Diego Public Library.
It becomes increasingly clear to Olly that Simon is watching him all the time, so he takes out the surveillance gear and heads out to meet an old friend, Dylan. Getting to Dylan's place, he finds that the man has died, but his daughter, Maddy has since moved in. Maddy comes on to Olly, who would except it's his dead friend's daughter and he just got his balls kicked in by the solar magnate's thug. He tries to leave, but Maddy insists he have a drink. When he refuses she pulls a gun on him. She's a private detective, too. She says he's way in over his head, that he should've taken the hint and dropped the case, and now she's gotta make sure he doesn't make it to the party. She knocks him out.
Olly wakes up tied to a chair. After a fairly harrowing ordeal getting untied, he finds that Maddy took his phone and his car. He heads back to the hotel by taxi. Once there, find that Simon has had a tuxedo sent to his room. He puts his earbuds and contacts back in and he agrees that removing them was a Bad Idea.
Olly breaks into the party in the San Diego Convention Center and looks for the boys. On the second floor, he seems a mysterious party running out of a conference room. He tries to catch up but he can't. He check in the room from which the figure ran and finds the two members of The Trust he was supposed to be protecting... quite dead. Then a gun is drawn on him from behind. It's Maddy, but she puts her gun away when she sees that it's Olly. She explains that it was her job to look after the boys (and to make sure Olly stayed away), but she got jumped and stuffed in a closet. Now she's pissed off and asks to be in on Olly's case so she can take her own case to its logical conclusion. Olly doesn't trust her, but admits he would've knocked her out if he had to, so she's on the case.
Maddy has a key to the boys' hotel room and they find tickets to Cloud Nine. They decide that they'll need to shuttle up there after a pit stop in LA.
Not to reveal everything, but Butterfli's helpful features are a front. As a result of the tampering in the womb, Derek Treblehorn's brain has basically become a giant functional mass of cancer. He's getting smarter every day, but it's killing him. So much so, in fact, that the Derek that's out and about and aggressively marketing for the company is an actor.
To save his life, Derek's developed a program that analyzes lines of causality and feeds the data back into a central computer, while bringing in interstellar data from his observation center, Cloud Nine. The idea is that if he follow the lines of causality to their source -- the prime mover, the very first Butterfly to flap its wings and cause a hurricane -- he can figure out the universe. If he can figure out the universe, he might be able to figure out how to either stop his brain from killing him or divest himself of the physical chains holding him back.
He's managed to analyze only a little of the data -- a countdown (not unlike Independence Day) and he's on the verge of getting the context for that. He does, but it's the last thing he gets. Due to various factors with Olly, Maddy, and Simon, the entire program is shut down and the data excised.
All Derek has is the strangely satisfying knowledge that the universe (or perhaps just Earth) will be following him to the grave in about 127 years. And the door's left open for a sequel.
Oh yeah, and Olly's case is going to lead him through twists and double-crosses galore. Yippee.
Unconsciously, I've been doing something very smart in terms of word count. Every "scene" I've either introduced a new character, location, or twist. Sometimes all three. I also find that my self-critical nature is working for me instead of against me. Every time that I find myself saying "Now how does that work?" I write a big expositiony thing to explain... and most of the time, I find a way to make that tie into the larger plot. Butterfli came out of my need to explain where Derek Treblehorn got the money for a place like Cloud Nine, which was in itself merely created as a place for Jody to go because I wanted to create an estranged father-son relationship. The Class of '42 started out as an explanation of why Simon was such a brain, and ended up providing Derek with a motive for discovering the meaning of it all.
Also, I've decided not to quell my inner critic when it comes to the really supremely stupid aspects of the plot. I just have the characters say what I'm thinking -- "Don't you think it's weird that everybody seems to be obsessed with 20th Century film?" for instance.
Most of all, though, I've just been writing like hell.
First of all, the whole thing is set in 2072. That isn't always apparent, because large chunks of the story are a pastiche on 1940s Humphrey Bogart movies.
Olly Henricks is a detective. He's bigoted in every possible way and he really doesn't learn and become a different or better person over the course of the novel. If anything, I keep adding more foibles. He's racist, sexist, homophobic, and has a serious chip on his shoulder about "the rich and fabulous." Weirdly enough, he has an English BA from UCLA and would prefer to be a writer, if he was any good.
Olly narrates the story and right up front he lets us know what's up -- everything's going to end and this is the story of how he knows that.
As his story opens, he receives a call from his estranged son Jody. Jody's heading up to the Cloud Nine orbital party platform for Spring Break and is really nervous about his first trip into space, so he calls his dad to tell him that he loves him. Olly mocks his son and gives him a bunch of crap about never calling. The call doesn't end well.
Olly then tells us that Cloud Nine is owned by Derek Treblehorn (better name to come later) and that it's basically a rave in space. It's a curiousity because most space resorts are really expensive, but this one is no pricier than an Earthbound tourist trap. It's built for young people to experience a taste of space while they're still young enough to be unable to afford it.
Treblehorn can afford it -- he's developed software that's on nearly every computer called Butterfli. Butterfli is software that observes what you do on your computer, where you go on the Internet, what you write in your documents... and the creates new programming molded to your lifestyle. Post to a lot of chess boards? It's a chess program. Blog about how disorganized you are? It'll become a personal organizer that is set up in such a way that you're more apt to stick to it. Olly finds the entire idea creepy, but most everyone else seems to dig having software tailored to them.
A woman comes to the office and hires him to find her runaway daughter, Catherine, who is running around with three hooligans who happen to be the sons of three of the most powerful people in California -- the man who controls the solar battery industry, the movie executive, and the woman who owns entire towns. Of these, the son of the third is reportedly the worst, but they're all pretty crappy people. Drugs, sex, scandal. The usual.
Olly heads out to the hoity-toity rich boy college where the sons (known as the Brain Trust for their propensity for thinking with their trust funds) attended before dropping out. After doing some recon, he learns they used to run with Simon Wint, a computer geek who ran tech for all their more complicated con jobs. Wint also kept them in good grades while they were still in school.
Olly impersonates a Secret Service agent and meets Simon. He tries to coerce him into helping by saying they'll prosecute for some vague government insurrection (because he figures somebody with Wint's rep has probably done something). Simon, however, is not dumb and knows who Olly is and agrees to help him. Seems that the boys latest scheme involves blackmailing Derek Treblehorn for sleeping with the underage Catherine, and their first attempt to get at Derek lead to a complete dataloss for Simon's systems. The Trust ditched him and he's keen on getting back at them and Treblehorn.
Up in Wint's apartment, Simon prepares Olly for the technological barriers he's going to face if he goes up against Treblehorn, including a complicated device called Kokoon which is like Butterfli for Butterfli -- it molds itself to the program's self-altering operational matrix and nullifies it. Since Treblehorn's systems all run on Butterfli, it may be very necessary.
Olly points out that Simon's got way too much high level technical knowledge -- it seems unreal. Simon reveals that he's a result of the Class of '42. In 2042, a government experiment was conducted to optimize the genetic outlay of babies by altering the reproductive systems of the parents before conception and then fiddling with the baby in the womb after. It was only a moderate success and only one person from the class of '42 has made anything of himself -- Treblehorn. Interestingly, though, Wint's mother actually suffered a miscarriage the first time, but a side effect arose. The reproductive systems of both Wint's father and mother were locked -- they later had two boys three years apart and both are genetically identical. Simon is one of those boys.
Simon sets Olly up with earbuds and contacts -- they're wired so that Simon will see what Olly sees and hear what he hears, as well as be able to give him vocal instructions in highly technical situations.
Getting back to the office, Olly finds he has a visitor. The solar magnate is sitting at his desk, and after mocking him a bit, tells him to drop the case. Olly refuses and has the living crap beaten out of him. The solar magnate leaves a check for double what his client is paying. Simon, who saw the whole thing, calls Olly's secretary and has her take him to the hospital. Olly's prety banged up, but he's determined to continue with the case. He has Janice cash the check while he heads to San Diego -- two of the Trust are there to corner Treblehorn at a party he's throwing in honor of the new San Diego Public Library.
It becomes increasingly clear to Olly that Simon is watching him all the time, so he takes out the surveillance gear and heads out to meet an old friend, Dylan. Getting to Dylan's place, he finds that the man has died, but his daughter, Maddy has since moved in. Maddy comes on to Olly, who would except it's his dead friend's daughter and he just got his balls kicked in by the solar magnate's thug. He tries to leave, but Maddy insists he have a drink. When he refuses she pulls a gun on him. She's a private detective, too. She says he's way in over his head, that he should've taken the hint and dropped the case, and now she's gotta make sure he doesn't make it to the party. She knocks him out.
Olly wakes up tied to a chair. After a fairly harrowing ordeal getting untied, he finds that Maddy took his phone and his car. He heads back to the hotel by taxi. Once there, find that Simon has had a tuxedo sent to his room. He puts his earbuds and contacts back in and he agrees that removing them was a Bad Idea.
Olly breaks into the party in the San Diego Convention Center and looks for the boys. On the second floor, he seems a mysterious party running out of a conference room. He tries to catch up but he can't. He check in the room from which the figure ran and finds the two members of The Trust he was supposed to be protecting... quite dead. Then a gun is drawn on him from behind. It's Maddy, but she puts her gun away when she sees that it's Olly. She explains that it was her job to look after the boys (and to make sure Olly stayed away), but she got jumped and stuffed in a closet. Now she's pissed off and asks to be in on Olly's case so she can take her own case to its logical conclusion. Olly doesn't trust her, but admits he would've knocked her out if he had to, so she's on the case.
Maddy has a key to the boys' hotel room and they find tickets to Cloud Nine. They decide that they'll need to shuttle up there after a pit stop in LA.
Not to reveal everything, but Butterfli's helpful features are a front. As a result of the tampering in the womb, Derek Treblehorn's brain has basically become a giant functional mass of cancer. He's getting smarter every day, but it's killing him. So much so, in fact, that the Derek that's out and about and aggressively marketing for the company is an actor.
To save his life, Derek's developed a program that analyzes lines of causality and feeds the data back into a central computer, while bringing in interstellar data from his observation center, Cloud Nine. The idea is that if he follow the lines of causality to their source -- the prime mover, the very first Butterfly to flap its wings and cause a hurricane -- he can figure out the universe. If he can figure out the universe, he might be able to figure out how to either stop his brain from killing him or divest himself of the physical chains holding him back.
He's managed to analyze only a little of the data -- a countdown (not unlike Independence Day) and he's on the verge of getting the context for that. He does, but it's the last thing he gets. Due to various factors with Olly, Maddy, and Simon, the entire program is shut down and the data excised.
All Derek has is the strangely satisfying knowledge that the universe (or perhaps just Earth) will be following him to the grave in about 127 years. And the door's left open for a sequel.
Oh yeah, and Olly's case is going to lead him through twists and double-crosses galore. Yippee.
Unconsciously, I've been doing something very smart in terms of word count. Every "scene" I've either introduced a new character, location, or twist. Sometimes all three. I also find that my self-critical nature is working for me instead of against me. Every time that I find myself saying "Now how does that work?" I write a big expositiony thing to explain... and most of the time, I find a way to make that tie into the larger plot. Butterfli came out of my need to explain where Derek Treblehorn got the money for a place like Cloud Nine, which was in itself merely created as a place for Jody to go because I wanted to create an estranged father-son relationship. The Class of '42 started out as an explanation of why Simon was such a brain, and ended up providing Derek with a motive for discovering the meaning of it all.
Also, I've decided not to quell my inner critic when it comes to the really supremely stupid aspects of the plot. I just have the characters say what I'm thinking -- "Don't you think it's weird that everybody seems to be obsessed with 20th Century film?" for instance.
Most of all, though, I've just been writing like hell.
