Log 4.8 So far, so far

I've done what I set out to do at the beginning of the month. I've turned an idea into a script - i havn't yet written out the whole thing as a script, but I have the dialogue, the scenes, the story. Were I to write it out as the script I will submit, only about a quarter of what I've written would fit the word count, and I've only written half the "issue".

It begins with a superhero, who is the dream self divorced from the protagonist, a primal force whose only motivation is 'The Hunt', the thing that joins the dots and chases, hunts ---

The waking self.

While I'm still only just dipping my toes into the writing game with any sense of integrity and purpose, I am still trying to avoid cliche. I do not wish to construct a post-modern superhero in the Alan Moore sense, one who is motivated by personal agenda's and various neuroses. What motivates [The Shadow] is the hunt. I have this idea that characters like Batman are who they are because they are in touch with their animal selves - obvious when I think about it. [The Shadow] is what he is because he's in touch with Dream itself - and in this work dreams are not fluffly wuffy safe places to be. They have big teeth.

The story is essentially about uniting the dreamer with the dream, via an explosion of spurious ideas that turn the world upside down and inside out. It's in no way as simple as 'you have this world over here, and it's real. You have that world over there and it's everything else'. The dream self is as real as the waking self, and this is about what is created when the two are united, fusing those two worlds to create something new.

In it there is a sort of conspiracy by the media to own dreams, to seperate them from the audience so that the audience becomes dependent upon the media to feel alive, whole and like they have an imagination. It begins with a revision of previous methods in the light of the death of what is known as "The American Dream". This death is the reason for Open Auditions and Reality TV; the public are becoming rowdier the more they see that celebrity, fame and wealth are unattainable for the majority. This group of conspirators has the responsibility for maintaing a unified global paradigm, and is now considering providing not only entertainment, but an experience.

They are not the "bad guys", because if they were things would be as they seem, and I'm aiming to move beyond things being what they seem in the story. They are providing a service, in a way, although 'The Old Order' has become decayed as it's members succumb to the pleasures of their own successes.

There is a new technology, which I have fiendishly called The Natural User Interface, which has been designed to hunt down terrorists. They whole thing is set against the back drop of the war on terror, with the two main elements of this war being

a) The enemy is no longer defined by uniform or territory

b) The soldiers/heroes don't know who their superiors are.

Thus the scene is rife for paranoia, the waking selfs cousin to dream, the consequence of two much stimulation, too much information, not enough trust and a dawning realisation by the characters that truth and belief are fictions.

Effectively the machine synchronises the Soldier/Superhero/Hunter character with the Enemy/Villain/Hunted character. The obvious consequence of this would be that one would not know who is good and who is bad, the Superhero would take on villainous characteristics, the Villain would take on heroic characteristics. No! This will not happen, because the machine is not in touch with the Enemy in any way. The Enemy is a construct created by the programming in the machine, L.I.S.T. (living information systems technology) and thus is also a fiction. The justification for this by the "Gov" and the Inventors is that while the programming creates a construct, the Soldiers do actually find enemies.

The protagonist I have yet to work on. Given the genre, and the readership and my own inclinations, it seems obvious that the protagonist will be a 20-30 something "ordinary guy". The S/S/H, Scientist, Media contingent are much more developed than the protagonist, since he only comes into this "issue" half way through and I havn't had a chance at all to work on him yet. So far he has had an experience of his partner becoming divine during sex, which then initiates a psychic breakdown that ties in with the S/S/H synchronistic hunt in a round about way - both events are essentially the same thing in different worlds.

All of this is why I have given the piece the working title of "PSYCHONAUT".

I hope that having these different characters will mean that I have sharpened up my voice and POV skills, and have given myself the challenge of having my characters echo each other through different paradigms.

Writing all this it's clear to see who and what my influences have been. I don't, however, feel like I am copying anyone or rehashing old ideas since the "issue" is largely based on my own experience. Primarily, even. There are themes here that have been in my heart and in my head for pretty much decades. Dream is the most obvious one.

Man, if anyone has sat through a class room of people telling you "You have no idea of the real world" while they spout tired and trite but acceptable cliche's and moralisms, you'll know what I mean.

Personal Reflection: Wow. How alone am I. All dressed up with nowhere to go.