Dreams and Dramatic Tension
Day 22 of Writing
The Relentless was inspired by a dream. It was very vivid and very exciting, and it stayed with me after I woke up. It included the basic premise, but almost everything else has been changed since. The original dream was part cheesy rip-off of The A Team, with a team of military commandos being falsely accused, escaping, and then joining a super secret government program. I never even liked The A Team.
I used to be a lucid dreamer, before the meds I am on now that keep my brain functioning. I still have plot heavy cinematic dreams, some so good I wish I could record them. They are visually dense, and when I could lucid dream I could walk around in a dream and explore how detailed it was. The dream engine in our heads is really astonishing.
I liked the basic premise of an unstoppable group, but changed them from being military to being spies. Sadly, my dream characters were pretty one dimensional, so I spent a lot of time developing them and making sure I had a diverse team in terms of skill sets, background and experience.
One of the big challenges in a story like this is creating dramatic tension when your main characters can’t be killed. Sure, when you watch an action movie or TV show (with perhaps the exception of Lost), you are usually certain that the main characters, no matter what peril they are put in, are going to survive. That is even more certain in this story.
That means that the usual approach of putting a character in a life or death situation lacks any dramatic tension. The way I solved that problem is by putting the people around them in danger. No matter what, my heroes will survive, but what they do has potentially deadly consequences for others.
They can also be hurt, which does offer some dramatic possibilities. Nothing bad that physically happens to them is permanent, but it can be very unpleasant at the time. How dark things will get on this front is undecided.
What’s Up With Us
We are in better shape than many, thanks to an important decision made in January. My wife Belle hated her job. The main reason she had it was because of our need for health insurance. Well, everyone needs health insurance, and in most countries they get it, except for in America. Quit your job and you are stuck with the very expensive Cobra option.It is a terrible system that is currently costing us dearly. We have to have it because I have a fairly severe neurological disorder, and without my very expensive meds, I don’t function at all. Without insurance, my drugs are way more expensive than we can afford.
My wife is an excellent speaker, entertainer, and magician. It is what she used to do years ago full time, and what she wants to go back into full time. Terrible timing for that, as it turns out. You can’t book her now, but someday you’ll be able to again. She really wants to be performing. In the meantime, you can learn more about her at BelleDaily.com. She has a blog there about her magical adventures.
By early January, she had just had it with the hostile and abusive workplace with incompetent, unethical, and cruel bosses. Yes, she had two bosses, and yes, that never works. She walked out. She probably could have sued but she just wanted it to be over. Wescom in Pasadena was the worst place she had ever worked, and she has a long resume.
The plan in January was to focus on her magic performances and developing new original magic effects. Because February is typically slow for shows, she decided to do some consulting to fill the gap. First, though, we needed a vacation, and we took off for a week in Vegas. Turns out that was the last chance for awhile.
On the drive out she interviewed for a consulting job she did not think she would get. I got to listen to her interview as we drove across the desert towards Vegas, and she is very good at it. By the time we got home she had the gig, working for one of the top ten hospitals in the country- Cedars Sinai. That would turn out to be quite fortuitous.
She began working there on January 28th. They had new offices under construction and she moved into the new office a few days ago. She will start working from home in a few days. She used to work at home until she got her last job. As a writer, I also work from home, and I missed having her here with me.
One of the advantages of her job is that she gets briefed with confidential information every day on the status of the health crises here in California. We are able to stay ahead of the curve in terms of protecting ourselves, since she has access to the best and most up to date information.
We also live in a gated community that has a lot of Filipino residents, many of whom are nurses. Things got locked down here pretty early, with information going out to residents on how to better protect themselves. Home owners associations can be awful, but other than hating trees that aren’t trimmed into the shape of a blow-pop, ours is pretty good.
Another bit of good luck is that my wife Belle bought a package of N-95 masks months ago for her workshop projects, where she builds and improves and refurbishes her magic equipment. The package was open so it could not be reused, but we can still use them. There are only three left and we’ll hold onto them just in case things get worse. Based on what I know, they almost certainly will