Kosmosaic Books – G.L. Breedon

The day job has been keeping me far too busy lately. I have a bit of breather today, but no time to write a substantial post, so I thought I’d dip into the archives and post an excerpt from a sci-fi screen play I wrote years ago called Unexplained Phenomenon.

I wrote the first draft back in 1996 and a agent shopped it unsuccessfully for a year before letting it drop. I’ve revised it a few times over the years, the last time in 2008.

Below is a quick description of the story and the first few teaser scenes. If it seems like something you might want to read, you can download a PDF of the full Unexplained Phenomenon screenplay.

Unexplained Phenomenon Synopsis:

Science reporter Ian Banks is assigned to investigate the strange formations that have been appearing around the world: Complex geometric patterns that appear everywhere from freshly fallen snow and living forests to polished rock on the face of mountains to a strange monument that people have spontaneously begun to build in the fields of Iowa.

A mysterious admirer sends him information proving that the U.S. government is not only communicating with whoever is responsible for the formations, but that a secret agency has initiated a series of events it cannot control and which will climax with a world altering impact within days.

Soon, Ian and a professor of modern mythology he inadvertently involves, Elizabeth Carson, set out to find the meaning of the formations while eluding the government agents who desperately want to silence him before he can reveal what is really happening.

Unexplained Phenomenon Excerpt:

EXT.  FIELD IN KANSAS- DAY

TITLES: “KANSAS, THE UNITED STATES”

The noonday sun beats down as a large John Deere tractor pulls a plow through the field, turning over rows of earth.

A small, wiry FARMER in his fifties sits in the cab of the tractor singing along with a Johnny Cash song on the radio. The tractor suddenly stops and the Farmer lurches forward, his foot sliding off the accelerator.

The tires of the tractor spin in place for a moment and then come to a halt as the Farmer pulls the hand break and steps down from the cab.  Cursing under his breath, the Farmer walks back to examine the plow, finding it bent and twisted where it has made contact with a large piece of rock.

FARMER
Well, shoot…

The Farmer looks closer and sees that the large slab of rock that has damaged his plow has been pulled away from a wide opening in the earth.  He bends down and peers into the hole.

INT. CAVERN BENEATH THE FIELDS- DAY

Light streams into the large cavern from a hole above a sloping set of crude stairs.  The beam of a flashlight sweeps through the darkness as the Farmer descends into the cavern, slowly navigating his way down the dust-laden stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs the Farmer pauses, aiming his flashlight around the interior of the cavern.  There are several solid stone support beams at regular intervals throughout the space, each covered with a series of strange symbols and pictograms. He walks forward carefully, the beam of the flashlight moving back and forth.  The beam of light stops as the Farmer freezes and gasps.

FARMER
What the hell…?

There in the glow of the Farmer’s flashlight stands a large metal disk some ten feet wide and two feet thick, its smooth polished surface reflecting shards of light throughout the cavern. The surface of the disk is covered in strange symbols that spiral around its edges and in toward the center where there is single pictogram-like image engraved.

FARMER (CONT’D)
Well, I’ll be damned.

The Farmer steps forward and examines the disk more closely.  Licking his lips he reaches out a hand and places it on the surface of the metal disk.  He jumps and suddenly snaps his hand back, as though receiving an electric shock.

FARMER (CONT’D)
What the… Jesus!

As the farmer watches the symbols on the metal disk begin to move, and to change, and to glow from within.  The glow from the shifting symbols on the disk grows in intensity blasting a blazing light over the Farmer and the cavern, suffusing everything in a brilliant white radiance.

FADE TO WHITE:

FADE IN FROM WHITE:

EXT.  WHEAT FIELD IN KANSAS- SUNRISE

The rising sun lends a deep golden glow to the large wheat field.

TITLES: “Two Years Later”

A farmer comes striding through the wheat toward a barn that sits in the middle of the field.  He is an older, heavyset man who is beginning to bald and his walk from the farmhouse in the distance has caused a sheen of sweat to bead on his forehead.  His name is ROBERT BLOCK.  He pulls out a red bandanna and wipes his brow as he reaches the barn.

INT. BARN- MORNING

Robert opens the door to the barn and steps inside. The barn looks like most barns; dusty, dirty and filled with farming equipment.  A ten feet into the barn there is a wall with another door. Robert walks to the second door leaning to peer into a knothole in the wallboard. A thin line of blue light scans his retina and the second door swings open slightly.

INT. RESEARCH BARN- MORNING

Robert steps into a brightly lit barn filled with computers, desks, tables, scientific equipment, and a staff of researchers.  The barn had been built over the underground cavern.  The stone roof of the cavern has been removed and covered with glass.  Beneath the glass the large metal disk can be seen, the symbols on it glowing faintly, shifting and changing slowly in a constant inward spiral.

In front of the disk a dark haired young woman named GINA sits cross-legged on the ground in a meditative pose, her eyes open as she stares at the shifting symbols; especially the one in the center.  Though it is different than the symbol that was in the center when the Farmer found it, it is the only one that does not change.

The symbols are pictographic-geometric forms of an exceedingly complex yet fluid and beautiful nature.  They seem to emerge from some ancient and long forgotten region of the collective unconscious; immediately alien, but somehow intimately familiar.

Robert walks through the room to a bank of computers where a woman and man sit.  They are RESEARCHER ONE and RESEARCHER TWO respectively.  The screens in front of them are filled with different views and readings of the disk and Gina.

ROBERT
What do you have for me?

RESEARCHER ONE
I’m down loading the satellite pics of this morning’s symbols right now.

RESEARCHER TWO
I have several satellite pics of occurrences from today in England, China, and the West Coast.

ROBERT
Let’s see them.

Researcher Two taps his keypad and several screens are filled with identical symbol formations all seen from satellite photos taken 150 miles above the Earth. The first symbol formation is outlined with ripe golden stalks in a field of young, green wheat.  The second is created from a large swath of green algae on the China Sea.  And the final symbol formation is composed of some sixty humpbacked whales lazily floating in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

RESEARCHER ONE
Gina’s been fixed on this one for the last eight hours.

Researcher One gestures to her screen indicating that all three symbol formations from around the world are identical to the symbol in the center of the metal disk.

ROBERT
How is she doing?

RESEARCHER TWO
She’s been up all night, but her numbers are all in the green.

ROBERT
Tell her to take a break. Give her a day or two off.  Tell Richard he’s up next.

RESEARCHER ONE
His symbols are always so much less interesting.  More masculine. Hard.

RESEARCHER TWO
I don’t care what they look like, I just want to know what the hell we’re saying to each other.

ROBERT
I think who we’re speaking with may be more important that what we say. This hasn’t turned out to be the cosmic Rosetta Stone we had hoped it would be.

RESEARCHER THREE, seated nearby and staring at a screen suddenly speaks up.

RESEARCHER THREE
Oh my God!  Come look at this.

Robert walks over to Researcher Three and so do several other people.

RESEARCHER THREE(CONT’D)
It just came up on recon satellite two.

ROBERT
Where is that?

RESEARCHER THREE
Peru.

More people have gathered around the screen.  The image is of hundreds of native Peruvians creating the same symbol formation as in the center of the metal disk by clearing away the thin layer of rocks that cover the desert ground to create long lines in the mountain plains.

RESEARCHER TWO
Now how the hell do you explain that?

ROBERT
I need a report on the Nazca lines ASAP. Everything you can find.

Researcher Two runs off to do as Robert asks.

RESEARCHER ONE
That would take weeks to create, maybe months.

RESEARCHER THREE
How could they have known? Robert turns to one of the researchers.

ROBERT
Get the general on the phone.  He needs to see this.

Robert turns back to the screen and stares in amazement.

A few weeks ago I came across Brandon Sanderson’s First and Second Laws (of magic) at his blog and they sparked a great deal of thinking.

The two laws are:

Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

Sanderson’s Second Law of Magics: Limitations > Powers

Sanderson goes into detail explaining each law and how it affects his writing. His first law is pretty simple. If the reader doesn’t understand how magic works in your world it will be harder for them to believe you when you use it to save the hero/heroine. He likes magic systems with clear rules and boundaries. So do I. But if you don’t, and your magic system has no rules (which makes it hard to call a system) then you need to make sure the reader understands this as well – again, so they will buy into your use of magic to save the day. (The same can easily be said for technology in sci-fi).

His second law is a little more intriguing. He’s essentially saying that what makes a character interesting (and the magic system interesting) is not what they can do with magic, but what they cannot accomplish. The power of their magic will help save them, but the limitations of their magic will put them in peril – and it is the peril what will help readers identify with the character and keep turning pages.

I thought those were both great observations. Reading them made me wonder not just how they can positively affect my own writing, but what other rules about magic I might find helpful.

I did a lot of research on creating magic systems before constructing the ones in The Wizard of Time and The Young Sorcerers Guild series. Both have similarities, but they are very different, each with clear rules about what the magic can do and what is required to accomplish it. For me the interesting thing about magic is not how it can help the characters, but how its use can cause problems. Magic is basically breaking the laws of physics in different ways, so I think when you break the law, there should be some consequences. Maybe not all the time, but certainly when a character uses magic in a big way there should be some big repercussions that play out in the plot and directly affect the character in question, as well as other characters that might get caught up in the ripple effects of the magic.

This is all useful thinking right now because I am in the process of figuring out how Gabriel’s use of magic can cause problems in The Wizard of Time Book 2. But it is also thinking that brings other laws and rules to mind.

The first is obvious – Arthur Clarke’s 3^rd Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Which leads to Larry Niven’s corollary law: “Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology.”

The third popped into my head because I was thinking of it in relation to plot the other day – the Pareto Principle, usually called the 80/20 rule. A few business examples (from Wikipedia) illustrate the point:

• 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spend
• 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products
• 80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff

This gets translated to all kinds of things, like 80% of your enjoyment comes from 20% of what you do. So that got me thinking about how the 80/20 rule might relate to novels. I’m not sure that it does really, but I suspect it might. I can certainly see how it relates to most non-fiction. In nearly every case of a non-fiction book I’ve read, 20% of the text provides 80% of the meaning and importance. Most writers don’t have that much to say, but they still need to fill 300 pages to get published.

So, if the 80/20 rule does relate to novels, does that mean that 80% of a reader’s enjoyment comes from only 20% of the novel?  Since I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about plot these days, as I revise the plot outline for WOT #2, I’m wondering if 80% of the story and action is found in 20% of the plot?

Again, I’m not sure if that holds true for most novels, and this is mostly a thought experiment, but I can see how keeping that rule in mind when plotting and writing might help to bend those numbers in your favor. When you think about a story and the plot that tells it, how much of it is essential? Sure there is a beginning, a middle, and an end (supposedly you’re not supposed to allow new beginnings, multiple middles, and double endings), but how much plot can you cut out of a story and still have the essence of the story present? In many cases – a lot.

How many times have you read a novel and thought that things were happening to the characters just to have things happening to the characters?  How many times have you thought to yourself the so-so novel your were reading might have made a great short story? Or that the film you were watching should have been a TV episode?

I think both films and novels can get trapped by a self impose structure that actually works against the story that is being told. Romantic comedies are a perfect example of this. Valentines was a few days ago and there was an article about why so many romantic comedy films fail to satisfy audiences.

The article was amusing, but I think the real problem with romantic comedies (and many films and novels) is a slavish adherence to a formulaic conception of three act structure. It usually goes like this:

Act 1 – Girl (because nearly all romantic comedies these days are from the perspective of a woman) meets Boy; Girl (who is somewhat neurotic because apparently slight neurotic women are supposed to be funny) and Boy (who is generally a bit of a jerk – I call this the Mr. Darcy syndrome) are initially repelled by each other, but secretly somewhat attracted (I suspect because she has daddy issues and he spends too much time watching porn to understand women as people); we spend some time learning inconsequential things about individual backgrounds of Girl and Boy, at the climax of Act 1, Girl and Boy are thrust together in some, hopefully, interesting way.

Act 2 – Girl and Boy spend the next hour getting to know each other. Girl realizes Boy is not as big a jerk as she thought he was. Boy sees that Girl’s neurosis is actually quite charming, Girl and Boy realize they like one another (but usually not enough to actually kiss – unless they have sex – it’s usually one or the other), and at the climactic moment of Act 2 – forced by the Iron Law of Three Act Structure – one of them (usually the Boy being a jerk again – unless it’s the Girl playing out her daddy issues in reverse) does something completely out of character and against all common sense, to sabotage the relationship and break the couple apart so that…

Act 3 – Girl and Boy spend the next 20 minutes realizing what an awful mistake he/she/they have made and finally reunite for that climactic movie-ending, all-questions-answering, no-more-problem-creating kiss. Roll credits.

For me, at least, I think the application of the Iron Law of Three Act Structure is the main reason why my general reaction to romantic comedies (and action films, and now that I think of it, almost all films) is blah! Treating three act structure like an iron law and forcing formulaic formatting on to the plot of stories makes them blandly predictable. Everything is telegraphed. The reader or viewer knows what is going to happen because they have seen the same thing happen at the same moment in countless other novels and films. For instance, why are so few romantic comedies about married couples (and I don’t mean the ones where the characters spend the whole story either cheating on each other or thinking about cheating on each other)? Why is it that no one seems to believe that people in a loving and committed relationship can be funny? The only exception to this seems to be when children are added to the married couple comedy. Apparently, kids are always funny.

So, wait, where was I before I started this diatribe against the misuse of three act structure? Right. The 80/20 rule.

If we can accept the proposition that in general 80% of the enjoyment of a story comes from 20% of the plot, how can we change that? With good, multi-layered structure. The sort of thing that most books on writing (whether for film or stage or novels) tell you. Each section, chapter, or scene of the story should either expand our understandinf of the characters, advance the plot, or resonate thematically in some significant way – preferably the chapter or scene should do all three.

For myself, I need to examine why each part of a story is there and how it can advance those three things (character, plot, and theme). If a scene or chapter doesn’t do those things, I need to figure out how to change it, or I should probably get rid of it. Sometimes a scene can only be about plot or character. If plot and character are the things we tend to enjoy most about a story (and I’m assuming we tend to enjoy them more than descriptions of settings), then by careful plotting and writing we can hopefully get to a point where the reader is getting 80% of their enjoyment from 80% of the story.

I think I’ll call this the 80/80 Goal. It’s clearly not a rule or a law – just an aspiration. And I think you can’t really ask the reader to enjoy 100% of your story. Everyone has different tastes and the average reader is bound to find 20% of the story they don’t really connect with.

Now let me propose something else, based on this discussion of the 80/20 rule, but thinking of Sanderson’s two laws of magic: A character’s use of magic should only solve 20% of the problems in the story but this same use of magic should create 80% of the new problems the character will face. I think I’ll call that the 80/20 Law of Magic.

Not only does this restrict how I can use magic to get out of situations that put the characters in danger, it also means that each significant use of magic has consequences that will reverberate throughout the plot, creating new difficulties and conflicts to be overcome. It will also mean that characters will (hopefully) restrain themselves in the use of magic – because, like violence, it leads to more of the same.

Maybe this will be a corollary to the 80/20 Law of Magic – Magic only leads to more magic.

I’m not sure about that, but it’s a fun idea to play with. In fact, I can’t say that I’m sure about any of what I wrote above. Maybe I’m 80% sure about 20% of what I wrote. Or am I 20% sure about 80% of what I wrote? Regardless, I now that 100% of the time I spend blogging is time I’m not working on the next novel. So…Time to break some rules.

I came across this film in progress called Man Conquers Space on the Sci-Fi Movie Facebook page. It’s an amazing retro-future history documentary of a space program that never existed, but that every space geek dreamed of in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Since I grew up reading Popular Science magazines from the 1950s and a great set of 50s encyclopedias my grandparents had, I too envisioned the future of space travel and exploration though that brightly, rose-tinted lens of 1950s space optimism. It was a sad day when I was old enough to realize that the future that I was dreaming about – a future of space stations, moon bases, missions to mars, and regular space travel – was unlikely to be realized in my lifetime.

Sure, we have the International Space Station, but the US no longer has a Space Shuttle to build and service it. We now rely on the Russian’s unreliable Soyuz space craft to service and staff the ISS. The next US space fleet is still years away and will not be composed of reusable craft. Private companies are, thankfully, trying to step into fill the gap and expand access to low earth orbit, but even with government assistance, there are some big hurdles to overcome before private space travel is regular, reliable, and safe.

The website for the Man Conquers Space film project has a great background story page with a detailed future history providing the dramatic rational for the film. I love future histories.  The idea is simple – a sci-fi fictional history of the future, generally used as a backdrop for several stories or novels. Neil R. Jones seems to have created the first fictional future history with his Professor James stories (published between 1931 and 1951). I grew up reading the stories in Robert Heinlein’s The Past Through Tomorrow future history, Larry Niven’s Known Space future history, and Jerry Pournell’s Codominium future history, among others. I was always fascinated by a detailed vision of the future. It’s the sort of world building that lends a bit of realism to stories. Recently, I’ve found the future history of Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth and Night Dawn series captivating. A solidly created future history in sci-fi is akin to a vividly imagined world in fantasy. Both are backdrops for the story to take place in, but the level of detail, and the consistency of that detail, lends the story a deep patina of realism that makes it easier for the reader to suspend his or her disbelief.

Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote a script called Future History. It was a story about a man and his robot meeting a woman and her rocket ship in the year 2000 AD – as envisioned by the sci-fi pulp magazines and novels of the 1940s and 50s. I haven’t looked the script in years, so I have no idea how good or bad it might be, but I while hunting for something else in my digital files, I came across a Guidebook to the Future – a future history I had written up for the script and formatted as a guidebook for the screenplay agents I was hoping to entice to represent me.

I got go so exited watching the teaser film for Man Conquers Space that I decided to post the guidebook for my Future History script. I may post the script itself sometime soon, but I think I’d want to read again before taking that leap.

Follow this link for Future History: A Guidebook to Tomorrow.