In an action novel, you want to come up with action sequences that seem new and fresh. You want to provide your audience with something that seems original.
The sequence I just finished writing I came up with several years ago after watching YouTube videos of people climbing ridiculously tall towers. They can be taller than the tallest buildings. It seemed like the perfect place for a fight sequence.
As I was doing some additional research, I just discovered a movie released this month titled Fall. It is about two young women who on a lark decide to climb one of these super tall towers. In my story it is 2200 feet tall. In the movie it is 2000 feet tall. There is no fight sequence, and the entire movie is about the tower, rather than just one sequence in a book, but still. Now people will just think I took the idea from the movie.
That is the way it goes. Being first to come up with an idea is a very difficult task. Maybe it is time to let go of the need to make things new and just focus on giving them my own original spin. I felt like I did that with the car chase sequence and the bomb defusing (both times) and several other things. The concepts weren’t new, but the way it was handled was. Hopefully, anyway.
This is the writing stage where I don’t get much feedback. No one has read this yet (okay, my wife read a little of it), and won’t until the first draft is completed. I discuss plot details with my wife, but mostly I am on my own. I want my vision on paper first before it starts to get revised. Early critics can get in your head and get you to start questioning yourself. Later on I will listen to suggestions and possible edits, but not yet. I have been writing a long time and by this time I trust my judgment.
I am almost at the finish line. Next is the sequence in the evil villain’s lair, and then the final chapter. I have carried this story in my mind for years, thinking about it, working out ideas. It will be a little strange to finish and move on from it, but I do have other stories I want to work on and finishing this will free up some brain power.
What’s Up With Us
I am stunned. Blown away. My mind is boggled. I knew a lot about it already, but to actually use this new technology is even more amazing than hearing about it. There are some new technologies that change everything. This is one of them. Things will never be the same.
Take a look at the photo illustrating this blog entry. It depicts Maggie climbing the tower as in my story. I created it, but not directly. The woman does not exist. The tower does not exist. It is not even a photo.
Some of you in the know will realize that I must have gotten a beta invite for Dall-E 2. The image was created simply by typing “A 30 year old Iranian woman in a uniform on a tether hanging from a 2000 foot communications tower.” The AI software then presented me with four different versions to choose from. It only took a few seconds.
The version I used is just as Dall-E created it. I would tweak it a bit to get it to production quality, but it would not take much effort. It is almost as if the program read my mind and created the image I wanted. Even after seeing numerous demos, actually using it took my breath away. I have been following technology since I was old enough to solder (at 7 years old), and have been involved with many amazing developing technologies. Nothing has amazed me as much as this.
I am still trying to learn how this all works. I have a decent understanding of AI technology and the concept of deep learning. I played around with the original Dall-E and thought it was interesting but not especially game changing. In just a year they have expanded its capabilities significantly.
I thought I could give a brief explanation of how it works, but honestly, I would have to write pages and pages and there are better explanations on the Internet. If you are a computer nerd like me, you will want to read up on how it uses diffusion to turn noise into a photorealistic image.
Is every commercial artist concerned? They should be. Realistically, it takes a trained artistic eye to pick out the best image and tweak it to make it perfect, but for a lot of things, these images are good enough. This is definitely a disruptive technology that will impact copyright law, personal privacy, and the wallets of artists.
Get ready to be even more amazed. Once I pick an image, I can see variations of it, as below.
I can also have it done in any style. Below are versions done as a pop art illustration. I could also do it in the style of many famous artists.
It can do inpainting and outpainting. Inpainting lets you select any area of an image and modify it with a text description. You can take an existing portrait oriented photo and change it to landscape orientation by having new background added to fill in the edges. This is called outpainting. It can even do variations of existing photos.
Dall-E 3 will add video capabilities. The world is changing very rapidly.