Why Are Those Aircraft Flying Over Us All the Time? Getting Started Telling Your Stories ................................................................................................. CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret

Getting Started Telling Your Stories By CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret.)

The Great American Novel - Nuts and Bolts

In our last issue of Rotor Review, I teed up a piece entitled “The Great American Novel.” That title was a bit tonguein-cheek, because if you cycle back to that piece in Rotor Review, I didn’t talk about anything so lofty, but rather about thrillers: novels where ordnance gets fired, things blow up, there are heroes and villains and where the good guys typically win.

I focused on thrillers not only because that is my gig, but because a number of other helo bubbas I mentioned in that article write military-themed thrillers. Add to this the fact that most folks I speak with or who I work with in various writing seminars seem more inclined toward producing thrillers.

The goal for this article – as well as a few more downstream – is to help you move beyond the “I have a great idea for a novel,” and actually get down to the nuts and bolts, the “how to” so that you can produce 80,000 to 100,000 words of fiction that will entertain readers. That is the goal, but before we put pen-to-paper, let’s talk about that “idea” and where it can come from. There are so many paths, and it is crucial for you to pick the one that works for you, the one about which you are passionate. Only that passion will sustain slugging through creating hundreds of pages of prose.

Let’s deconstruct this a bit, because I believe that it is crucial for any writer to be wide open regarding where ideas can originate. Here are just a few examples, and they cover the spectrum:

Ideas Can Be a High Concept

In a post-apocalyptic world, what if the top .1% is delineated by length of life rather than wealth? This is the high concept of Burners.

Ideas Can Be a Theme

What is more important? Honor or loyalty? This is the theme of Duty, Honor, Country.

Ideas Can Be a Plot

On the same day, in six different years, the Time Patrol must keep the Shadow from changing our timeline. This is the plot of Time Patrol.

Ideas Can Be a Character

A housewife and female assassin must uncover the truth of the men in their lives in order to uncover their destiny. This is the character-focused thriller, Bodyguard of Lies.

Ideas Can Be a What If

What if people going into the Witness Protection Program really disappear? This is the what if behind Cut Out.

Ideas Can Be a Setting or Scene

An international treaty bans weapons in Antarctica: What if the U.S. put nuclear weapons there and lost track of them? This is the setting of Eternity Base.

These are ideas from well-known books or movies. They are familiar to many of you, so I suspect that you all get the notion that ideas can spring from anywhere.

When I lead writing seminars, much of the feedback involves attendees saying things like: “We don’t just want to hear best practices of this or that writer; we want to hear about what worked for you.” Fair enough. Here are four examples from four of my recent novels. They represent how I turned my ideas into thrillers.

The first one is “what if” that is plot-focused. The next on is “what if” as well, but it is character focused. The third and fourth are also “what ifs” and are character focused.

All right, you have your idea, your high concept, and you are passionate about it. What’s next? What all successful novel and screenplay writers do next is to turn their idea into a “log line.” What is a log line? Well, the writing expression comes from the old nautical term.

Originally, log lines were long thin ropes on a spool with knots tied in them that mariners unreeled behind their ships to measure their speed – in KNOTS. They counted how many evenly spaced knots passed through their hand as the sand in the hour-glass drained from the top to the bottom. The mariner’s log line was a necessity in helping them navigate their journey and not get lost. It told them how far they had gone in a certain direction and when to turn the boat to find their destination.

The other advantage of the mariner’s log line was that if the boat got lost, the sailors simply had to follow the log line back to port. As time went on, and captains become more adventurous sailing to distant lands, the log lines got pretty big. But, after a few ships sank from the enormous weight of the reels, ships never got lost again. Why? They learned their lesson and never ventured far from port.

Now, if that last part sounds like a joke, it wasn’t intended as such for the aspiring writers reading this. Log lines help us navigate our writing. They help to steer funding and attachments to our projects. And they direct audiences to theaters. Log lines are a necessary tool that keeps us focused in writing our story, and helps convince “names” to spend their time and money to get our story made and distributed. A

good log line tells us how far we need to go before we arrive at a turning point in the plot. And, if we get lost, a good log line will lead us back to the beginning where we can start again.

A log line is crucial to helping you focus on your story. Here is what a log line is. The subject of the sentence will describe (1)an imperfect but passionate and active protagonist. The verb will depict (2) the battle. And the direct object will describe (3) an insurmountable antagonist who tries to stop the protagonist from reaching (4) a physical goal on account of (5) the stakes, if the goal is not reached.

Sounds complicated? It’s not, and I can assure you that each of the helo bubbas I mentioned in my previous article: Kevin McDonald, Marc Liebman, Anne Wilson, Larry Carello, as well as many other writers, found a way to morph their idea for a novel into a tight, focused log line that then became their inspiration and guiding focus as they wrote their novels.

Perhaps enough for this column. Work on that idea that will come from anywhere. In the next column we’ll talk about the three most important ingredients for any thriller: plot, character and action. This too is not difficult. As Tom Clancy famously said: “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.”