Rob Osterman's Blog, page 6

Weekly Omens

This has been a good and bad week for me.  Some great things happened, and some not so great.

Here's a wrap up of the week's posts and news:

At Fictional Omens -

This week I finally got up my post about writing what you know and if you don't know it you need to research it.  The post was heavily informed by fellow author and fan-nerd Janine Spendlove.  Check out her War of the Seasons if you haven't.

At Mind the Thorns -

There has been no update because I suck and I haven't made myself write it yet.  This is bad.  This is very bad.  I need to write it.

Think of this as an opportunity to play catch up for those of you who are a few chapters behind.  See the favors I do you?  Here's Chapter 1 for those that have never read it.

At Bastion: The Final Hope

This week's update is an image from the point of view of one of the survivors. I'm still not sure the "story" there is direct enough but the whole project is an experiment anyway so we'll see what happens.  Comments are, of course, welcome.

In life -

It's been a bit of a crazy week.  Monday was off because of the MLK holiday (I was supposed to be writing) and I was sent on an errand to get Hot Dog for the Skylanders game.  I love my wife dearly but she's more obsessed with getting all the Skylanders than the 5-year old.

The new semester is off to a great start and content for Bastion is rolling along at a great rate.  I have several actors involved to create the multimedia content.  I have to admit that I'm very excited for it and it's distracting me from what I should be working on.

And your video of the week.... hmm...  How about Glee?  What I want to know is why do I need the Glee cover to have a great version of this song without profanity?

Write what you know, Again

Some time ago I talked about the importance of knowing what you're writing about.  At the time it was to reference my trip to a gun range to fire a hand gun for the first time.  After all, if I'm going to write it, I should know what it's like so I can capture that for my character.

Which also reminds me that I probably should get back over there and squeeze off a few bursts out of AR-15 or so.

So, as I've mentioned my latest project is to write something that blends "Fighting back for our planet after the Alien devastation" and "We are all that is left of Humanity".  I want it to be para-military based but that means that in the backstory of my characters there will probably be some military experience.

And aside from having memorized FM22-5 (or what ever its new designation might be), I really don't know that much about the military.

I do have some liscense for procedures once the main "Project: Bastion" part of the story gets going.  "Project: Bastion" (working title) will represent the secret organization that began to prep for an alien attack decades ago and is now "In charge".  As it's not strictly military I get some room to do what I "think will work" rather than having to match to what ~does~ work with our armed services.

But, as I said, I need to have those back stories accurate.  So it's off to do research.

And to this end I am fracking blessed.

Blessed, I tell you, dear reader, blessed.

Fellow author Janine Spendlove just happens to be a Marine.  With experience in "flying really big things."  So I can triple dip my research.  I get a) Marine information, b) flight information, c) combat information.  And she gets semi random text messages at 6 am as I drive to work and dictate them to Siri.  I also get guest posts from her as well.

It's not quite an ideal Give/Take relationship.  See "Blessed, I am" above.

But this isn't all about bragging about who I know, nor is it about random name dropping, though that is kind of fun.  Here's my point.

One of the main characters that the story will follow (and I plan to go Game of Thrones here and have 3-4 threads going concurrently) is slated to be the Crew Chief on a KC-130J.  I picked that aircraft not because I wanted to tap into Spendlove's expertise but because I wanted a big plane that could stay airborne for a long time.  It just so happened that there was a convient overlap.

I've also been musing that at some point this character may find herself in a position where she has to stop people boarding the plane to escape the aliens.  It's a trope approaching cliche, but it's more or less expected.  It happens in World War Z, it happened in BSG, and I think it may have happened in Walking Dead.

In my notes to Spendlove I commented that to fire her sidearm, my main character would be under orders to actually shoot anyone who tried to board.

I got an email back that first talked a little about where, when and how a crew member would be up in the air with a side arm.  But then my phone rang.

After very brief pleasantries we had the following exchange.

Me:  I don't know if it's my civilian mindset, but I just imagine that having to fire a weapon at a fellow American, outside of a war zone, would be a challenging thing, the kind of thing that she'd need to hear someone say "Shoot him" before she did.

Spendlove:  That's not how it works. Say I, as the aircraft commander in an armed conflict situation,  gave the order to not allow anyone to board the plane, I will fully expect and trust that my crew would do what it took to carry out that order. So if I heard a gun shot, while it would definitely get my attention and be concerning, I would assume that my crew was doing whatever they had to do to execute my orders to keep anyone from boarding. I trust them and they trust me.

As someone out side of the military this was outside of my head space.  It's not how I would act.

But I'm not a Marine.  I don't naturally think like a Marine.

If I'm going write a Marine character, however, I need to think like one, at least enough, to write her convincingly.

And that's something that came up with more conversation on the "Marine Mindset" as I've talked to Spendlove about this.  She drew my attention to a key word in that phrase:  Think like a Marine.  That doesn't mean find the shortest path between A and B because you were ordered to B.  It doesn't mean to blindly follow an order because it's the easiest thing to do.  It means taking in the order, wading through the various ways to see it done and follow that order efficiently, confidently, and within the rule of law for the engagement.

"Keep those people off the plane" is a pretty open order and one with a lot of paths to completion.  The point that Spendlove was making and it's taken me a while to put to words was not that she would expect someone to get shot; the opposite- she'd not want someone to get shot.  But if it should happen that there was gunfire it was because her Marines had exhausted all other options and were doing what they had to because keeping people off the plane was important enough that their officer in command told them make it so.

And while I'm on the subject I also want to make a very very firm point:  I am grateful that we have Marines who think like Marines.  As I mused on this post, which has been a big part of my thoughts as I work on my first few sections of this project, I knew I could come off as judgmental   The mindset of orders  are orders is what makes our military function as well as it does to protect our interests at home and abroad.

I enjoy great freedoms due to the sacrifices of those willing to train, fight, and if need be die, for those freedoms.

Really, I'm just grateful to have friends to remind me of what those sacrifices are.

Weekly Omens 1/18/13

So what a weird week it's been.  Finals week is always rough because there's so much to do and none of it is due until the middle of next week.  As someone who works best under pressure this is always a challenge because I'd so rather do anything besides work.

Speaking of anything else:  Double Prestige on the MK48 on Call of Duty.  Go me.

So here's what happened around my little patch of the web:

On Mind the Thorns

The vote was finalized and it appears that Regan is going to wait at home for Jeremiah's associate to come fetch her so together then fetch some item for Jeremiah.  More than likely she's going to spend the time scheming.  Watch Monday for the next chapter!

On Bastion:  The Final Hope

My second web-novel launched this week with a gripping (I've been told) first chapter.  Chapter one introduces Gunnery Sargent Beaubein and the crew of a KC-130 as they escape yet another mysterious cloud of death.  It's not reader directed and it will update weekly.  Have a read if you haven't yet.

Here at Fictional Omens

I have been so lucky to have the help of fellow author Janine Spendlove in my work and she has further blessed me with a guest post on the top 5 things people screw up when writing about the military.  It's a must read.

At home

Kaylee has strep throat and Xander has a horrible case of being 5.  Fortunately there are antibiotics for the former and an early bedtime for the latter.  But aside from work and writing it's been a quiet week.

I also want to thank Spendlove and her "friend in the Herc community" for further entertaining my questions and confusions.  She has been patient and dilligent in making sure that not only do I get the details right but that everything makes sense for what a Marine would "do" in these circumstances.  As such my To Do list includes some minor revisions to BtFH Chapter 1, but thankfully nothing that overly shifts the tone or plot.

This week's Video:

At first I thought this was all me and then I saw that the Raging Vegetarian was right there with me so it was a combined effort to completely eliminate the other team.  That's me coming in from the distance, gun blazing.

Guest Post: Writing Military

By Janine Spendlove

Rob is an old friend of mine, and we’ve both kind of gotten into the whole “writing thing” on our own, around roughly the same time. It’s been really neat to go on this parallel journey with him. One of delights has been a recent project he’s working on where he’s been tapping my knowledge base for one of his characters/story scenarios.
You see, in addition to being a writer, I am first, and foremost a United States Marine. My Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is that of a KC-130J Aircraft Commander.
Given my background and the back forth Rob and I have been having about his story (basically, me correcting all the things he’s getting “wrong” about Marine aviation – things that only someone in the community, like me, would know), he asked if I would do a guest blog post about the top 5 things people get wrong about the military.
I sat down with my husband (also a US Marine) to brainstorm and we came up with the following “top 5” (trust me, there are a whole lot more than this). Please bear in mind, given that we are both Marines, our knowledge base tends to be deeply steep in that, so what we have to say does not necessarily count for the other branches of service. So what does that mean? If you plan to write about the military, you’d better do some research.
1-- Ranks, forms of address


You see this a lot with costumers – everyone is a colonel or a general – you often see this in stories too. This simply not the case. The most common rank (in the USMC) is a private first class (PFC) to a corporal (Cpl) – basically an E-2 through an E-4. The most common aggregate age is 20 years old. Meaning the Marine Corps is young, and you’re not going to have a squad full of sergeants. You’ll have one sergeant and they’ll be the highest rank. Or maybe a very senior corporal depending on the unit’s situation.
My point is, you’re not going to have a sergeant major or a colonel leading a patrol through the jungle looking for insurgents.
Also, make sure to research every branch of service, what their rank structure is and how they abbreviate things. A captain in the Marine Corps and army are equals (O-3s), but a captain in the navy is a Marine/army colonel equivalent (O-6). Abbreviations are service specific too for example, Captain: Capt = USMC, Cpt = army, CAPT = navy.
Enlisted call officers “sir” or “ma’am” (gender dependant), and junior officers call senior officers “sir” or “ma’am.” Multiple officers are referred to as “ladies” or “gentlemen” not “sirs” or “ma’ams.” Generally speaking, senior officers/enlisted refer to junior officers/enlisted by their rank. Of course this is culturally dependant (ie, in the air force first names are used a lot, and in aviation callsigns are used a lot).
Flag officers (generals and admirals) are addressed by their rank the first time, and then by “sir” or “ma’am” later in the conversation. (ie, if a major came a cross a brigadier general, the major would say “Good morning, general.” The general would respond, “Good morning, major. How are you?” The major would respond, “Very good, ma’am. Thank you for asking.”
2- -Weapons/Mech

The biggest problem here stems from cinema and television, I think. Thanks to Rambo, people seem to thinks it’s perfectly normal to shoot a .50 cal from the hip. At 83 lbs (or 127 lbs with the tripod) I can barely lift the Ma Deuce much less fire thing from my hip, while I’m running down a “bad guy.”
So essentially many writers don’t understand the capabilities, limitations (ie, cycle rate), or how a weapon or mech is employed. Even made up “sci-fi” stuff has to have some basis in reality. You must understand how your weapon works whether it’s real or a figment of your imagination.
Another slip up commonly seen is that writers don’t understand what the military member’s duty weapon is, and when they would have it.  Case in point, enlisted Marines’ standard weapon is the M-16 rifle, whereas an officer’s is the M9 Beretta pistol. But this of course can also change depending on the situation. Enlisted aircrew do not fly with rifles, but are instead issued M9s, whereas a grunt platoon commander would get an M4 instead of an M9.
3- -Load carrying capacity/logistics

As Napoleon once said, an army marches on its stomach. Too often we see guns with never ending clips (I want a weapon that never runs out of ammo!), food and other necessities are all magically where they need or food/rest are never addressed at all.
The fact is a patrol can go out with just what it carries, but keep in mind that it will be severely limited by that. Want them to go out for a lot of time with no support? They’ll have to carry heavy packs with everything they need, will be noisy, and not be able to travel as far. Conversely, they can travel very light and go far, but how will they eat? Where will they sleep?  These are things the commander (and you, as the writer) must consider and address.
Wars have often been won by cutting off supply lines (ie, the Inchon landing in the Korean war, the north taking out the forts on the Mississippi and destroying southern railroads in the American civil war, and the British starving the French on the Iberian peninsula during the Napoleonic wars). 
I know it’s not sexy, but war boils down logistic, plain and simple.
4- -Tactics

If I were to discuss tactics, even just small unit tactics, here, this blog post would be far to long and wouldn’t have even scratched the surface. But the fact is if you’re going to write about war, you’d better have some understanding of tactics, realistic tactics. Now tactics evolve based on the conflict, location, and relative strength of the participants.
If you want to study some basics on tactics I suggest reading the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual – it’s short, free copies are online (google it), and it will help point you in the right direction.
But again, it all depends on the situation. Are you writing about a bunch orcs marching on line to attack a field full of elves? Perhaps a study of ancient warfare would better suit you (or Clausewitz). Conversely, if you’re writing about space Marines taking on an alien horde using guerilla tactics, bust out that small wars manual.
5- -Service culture

Not only does every branch of service have a very specific culture, but so do sub-sects in every branch. Meaning, it’s obvious that the Marine Corps and air force are very different, but then so are grunts and aviators within the Marine Corps. Then, within Marine aviation you have further subcultures – helo pilots and fixed wing pilots behave very differently from each other, and to further break it down the C-130 community is very different from the jet jocks. And so on and so on.
Yes, we all have common factors, and ultimately we are all Marines, but behavior that would be common in the aviation community (ie, lieutenants and captains in a Herc squadron all, for the most part, see each other as fellow company grade officers and all call each other by their callsign) would be absolutely taboo in another (a lieutenant in a grunt unit would never think of calling a captain anything BUT sir or ma’am and if they did, they would be very swiftly corrected).
Hopefully the biggest thing you’ve garnered in this blog post is that you need to do RESEARCH. Writing about an army tank driver? Find someone in the army who does that job and ask them to read your manuscript. Trust me, they’ll be more than happy to “fix you.” We’re a prideful bunch, members of the military, and we like to be portrayed accurately in books and film. We’re here to help!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Janine K. Spendlove is a KC-130 pilot in the United States Marine Corps. Her bestselling first novel, War of the Seasons, Book One: The Human, was published in June 2011 and her next novel, War of the Seasons, Book Two: The Half-blood, was released in June 2012. She’s also had several short stories published in various anthologies. A graduate from Brigham Young University in 1999 with a BA in History Teaching, she is an avid runner, enjoys knitting, playing Beatles tunes on her guitar, and spending time with her family. She resides with her husband and daughter in Washington, DC. She is currently at work on her next novel. Find out more at WarOfTheSeasons.com

Only if you mean to

It's no real secret, but I'm working on another major web serial that will launch within the next month.  This one, unlike Mind the Thorns, will not be reader directed, will update weekly (where I was forced to move MtT to every other week), and will feature a mix of prose, and multimedia or other updates.  My plan for it is to first have a at least a month's worth of writing done before it goes live so I have some wiggle room to ease up or work ahead as I need.

Because the story involves members of the military, I've been in close contact with several friends with military experience and they have been kind and patient enough with me to let me bounce ideas off of them, and proof read my work for factual inaccuracies and procedural oopses.

I've got a longer blog post coming soon that addresses one of those conversations but I wanted to hit on another theme that has come out here.  Specifically this:

Soldiers are trained not to fire warning shots.


Over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen they're having a symposium on gun control, gun violence and "guns in America".  This has put the issue of guns also on  my mind as a citizen and as a writer.  So this is not just a note about the scene where I had a Marine fire a warning shot in the first draft and then had to remove the warning shot for later drafts.

I won't spoil the scene but I needed tension.  I needed to escalate that tension and a gun shot is pretty tense. I've fired a gun a few times now, different guns at that, and the sound, and shock wave are significant.  They will, undeniably, get your undivided attention.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email back from a beta reader with the comment, and I quote:  "NO NO NO and NO!"

That lead me to thinking.

Guns have a single purpose:  to kill things.  We may use them for target shooting, but those are just games to practice what the gun is ~for~.  Being able to hit a small mark on a target simply means that you are practiced to nail a major organ and kill someone.  No more, no less.

And that's fine.  It's not intended to be a commentary on guns good or bad.  I see the above as no more controversial as saying "a car is to carry you from point A to point B."  Sure cars have other implications.  They represent power, freedom, status.  But at the end of the day the purpose of the car as a machine is transportation.

Or to provide another analogy, the telephone is to communicate ideas, verbally, to another person.  You call them, you share your idea, you hang up.  When I was in High School, on the other hand, I used the phone as a life line to the cool kids.  There was no social risk in spending hours on the phone with the class nerd so people, girls mainly, who would not acknowledge my existence in person, would happily engage me in conversation for 2-3 hours on a given night.

But I digress....

So here seems to be the logic:  The only reason to use a gun is to kill someone.

Suppose, for example, that the intention is to "take him alive" so the shot is aimed at a non-lethal area, like the shoulder.  What happens when instead of impacting muscle, the bullet breaks open the Axillary Artery?  In a few moments the victim is going to bleedout and instead of taking them alive you've taken them dead.

There are other ways to go if the intention is non-lethal.  Why take the risk of a fatal event if that is not the intent?

This strikes me as one of those things that writers do because it makes for a good plot, even if it doesn't jive with reality.  The main character has a gun,which is cool and all, but we don't him to have the burden of being a murderer.  We don't even want him to ~want~ to kill someone.  So he makes the "tough call" and he tries for a shot that will disarm, disable, and only wound.  He's the "good guy" and good guys don't kill people.

That also creates confusion in someone forced to take a shot in a high stress situtation.  The time it takes to decide "Shoot to kill" vs "shoot to wound" is time that someone might not be able to spare.  And even if they do spare it, what if they "miss" and either fail to disable, or (possibly) worse, kill?

To that end, the training, the repetition, the drill, is to shoot to the center of the body of mass (the easiest to hit) and also the most fatal place, ie, to kill.

I wonder, as I put down this under "The Writing Process" if perhaps our "gun culture" has created too many dramatic images of heroes using firearms to all other manner of purpose, everything except to kill.  Is it possible, then, that we might have less "problems", if the only time a gun was drawn was when lethal force was the desired outcome?

Kickstart FantastiCon

While I am very proud of FantastiCon and its reception so far, it needs an editor.  To that end I've posted on Kickstarter the desire to raise $800 over the month of January to get that editing job done.

Please consider backing the project if you've enjoyed my writing so far.  For $15 you receive a signed copy of the book with your name listed as a contributor and backing pledges of $30 or more will have the chance to appear in the novel itself as an "extra".

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1...

Thanks!

More inspiration

I had rather given up hope that the copy of Mind the Thorns that I sent to Patricia Tallman had arrived safely. But in just in time for the holidays this arrived and was added to my wall of inspiration:

No Genre Fiction For You

Here's the truth about writing genre fiction:

Frankly, no one new to writing should do it.

When I was in college I took creative writing class. It was an entry-level course in the English department. Something like English 140: Intro to Creative Writing. When we got our first assignment, the professor made it clear that she did not want anyone writing genre fiction for her class. If she wanted us to write a love story, she wanted it set in the real, modern-day world, with real, modern-day characters. No alien space scapes, no historical sailing ships. Just two people dealing with a problem.

Likewise, sometime after college, I became involved through my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, on a website for new artists. She had been active therefore sometime and invited me to join. Artists would submit their pictures and they were open to critique from others. And as you critiqued other’s pictures people would follow links back to your page and critique yours. It also had an incredibly active in Email list-serve. Advice about how to become an artist flew around fast and furious. The most common thread among the emails was the debate of whether or not a fantasy artist should go to art school. The prevailing opinion among starting artists was that art school was a waste of time and energy because all they did was make you draw oranges and bottles and useless things. If you were going to do nothing but draw dragons for the rest of your life why did you need to spend hours and hours drawing a cube? It was a waste of time wasn't it?

In many ways the two situations are identical. The master of the art tells the novice not to delve away from the real world that everyone knows well.

I believe I have commented on this before on this blog. Recently, however, I find myself in unusual place. I'm embarking on a new ambitious writing project that will be dominating my off weeks from my Mind the Thorns. It is set in a slightly post-modern real world. The main premise, is that on December 21 the world actually does end. But not because of some manner of lava flow, or some massive round of tornadoes, or the earth spinning out of control. 

Aliens invade. And kill everyone. 

Like my sci-fi epic that I have been working on off and on now for several months, I find myself obsessing over the first few chapters. I want them perfect. I write, rewrite, revise, and off to beta readers, and then rewrite again. I have not let it rest. Literally for five days now I have focused on a single sentence. The first one.

I did the same thing with the Queen’s Fury novel. I will I spent days and days obsessing over that first line.

What sticks out in stark contrast, however, is how I have spent a lot of my energy after that first paragraph. With the Queen’s Fury novel, I have many many notes that I made during that initial process, which included ship schematics, floorplans and organizational trees. I was creating a world from scratch. 

This time, with “Operation: Bastion”, I'm doing something quite different. I am dedicating hours and hours to research. I'm handing my manuscript to experts in the field and asking them to critique the finer details I've included. When a KC-130 begins it's preflight start up, what order do the propellers turn it? What do they referred to them as? Is engine one the first engine to come up? Do the pilot and copilot even discuss whether or not engine one is up and running?

That is just the technical things. I haven't even begun to discuss what it's like to write about a military mindset, using a modern military, while having access to people actually in the modern military. With her Majesty’s Space Navy, I had extreme license to take all manner of liberties. Sure, I may have someone say that they do not understand why in a space-faring world, people would choose only to engage two-dimensional plane of engagement rather than fight in three dimensions, but that's something that I can also hand wave away. I can say, well that's just the way their society, their future universe works.

The challenge with writing in the modern setting, is that I do not have that liberty.

Which forces me to do something that I believe all writers must make themselves do. They must make themselves research. They must make themselves talk to people. They must get their work out there for people to critique.

Because as people are reading their technical details, they will also get some feedback on the writing itself. It also slows down the writing process, allowing a writer to spend more time on the mechanics.

Research is one of those things that I think is under-appreciated among writers. At least the novice. Even when writing simple fun things such as fanfiction or cutesy romance, there is a great deal of value in understanding what you are writing about. It is very dangerous for someone to write into their story a character with alcoholism, but absolutely no experience with the disease. It is a unique one, and one that can easily be misrepresented. More to the point, is very easy for a naïve writer to think they are doing something justice, when all they are doing is perpetuating stereotypes. And I believe that is one of the dangers of writing.

We have a responsibility to be true to our subject, and not simply take the conventional wisdom and stereotypes and push them further into people’s psyche. If we are going to deal with something, we should deal with it right.

And it's not just responsibility, or pacing, it's about commitment to learning the craft. When you can just make it all up as you go along, you don't practice the art of staying within the believable. You let yourself get lost in describing these magical places, these futuristic tech, and you miss what it is that makes ~your~ fiction worth reading. Sure some people read to know what life is like at Hogworts, but far more read to find out how Harry Potter ~deals~ with life at Hogworts. It's about the people, the characters, the personal conflicts far more then it is about the setting or the uniqueness of the world.

The best stories, the ones that transcend culture, or time, are the ones that can be retold to any generation, any where.

And to the fledging artist, I would say the same. Learn how to draw the musculature of a horse before you try to draw a pegasus. Study how the human body goes together before you try to draw an elf or a dwarf. Look hard at the human face before you delve into the Kat-Man. That is what your instructors, advise, and it's solid advice.

Listen.

Where does the story start?

My latest writing project is something that I consider a crossover between Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Wead, and the video game for Xbox "XCom." In my review last week I played about some of it stronger points. Honestly the game is, hyper addictive, and has me almost wanting to write fanfiction for it. 

In addition, it also has what I consider a fairly underplayed story line for the dystopian world that seems to be very much commonplace. The Hunger Games for example I believe is meant to be a highly evolved American, human society. Revolution, for as long as he managed to keep watch it, was us about electricity. But what about the wasteland caused by aliens? Definitely stories that need to be told.

The real challenge, but I'm finding now, is figuring out exactly where the prose will be begin. I know going into my project that I will be posting things out of linear sequence. I know that I want to do flash-forwards and flashbacks all over the map. I want you to find out about something that the main character, well one of the main characters, did 30 days after the alien invasion. Then, in the next update, I want you to see her give a video diary taken three days before the first attack. I want to create that conflict of what is happening now, then give some some of what came before and what you can expect to happen in the future.

I believe that nonlinear storytelling is one of those challenges that I need to take oh. Plus, in making this a web serial, but giving myself a nonlinear storyline, I allow myself to update any part of the story whenever I feel the muse, or the motivation. It frees me from having to keep plugging along nicely straight-line, and allows more freedom to explore flashbacks as they become part of excepted system.

But that raises a whole new challenge unto itself. Where, exactly, do I want my story to start? What are the first moments I'm going to use to grab casual reader and say "hey you want to read more of this! This is going to be a very interesting story that you're now finding just the first part up read more!"

My choices seem to fall in my choices seem to fall in several categories.

I can start with the first moment that the aliens begin their attack. Life is happily plugging along everyone is smiling and oh no here comes death upon us in big fiery waves.

Option two, would be some short time thereafter. Our main characters have discovered that all is not right in the world, they begin to take steps to save themselves, and their loved ones. Perhaps they're not being fully successful. Either way things of been going badly for several hours now and there is great tension in the air.

Choice number three, would be picked up several days after the attacks, when things are still uncertain as to exactly what is going on everyone is trying to sort things out. The advantage of starting here is that I provide more room for flashbacks, however it is also very easy to slide in some kind of melancholy some kind: oh wow, now we get to breathe and while we breathe nothing interesting is happening because we're pausing to breathe.

My fourth option then seems to be to begin several weeks or months possibly even a year after everything has begun. Rather than establishing how the only resistance is built itself up, I simply say "Hey, look! There is a resistance against the aliens. What aliens? Well the aliens that attacked sometime ago. We'll talk about them later. For now all you need to know is the world sucks, there are aliens everywhere, and mankind has been reduced to about oh say 30 people."

Of course the advantage of taking that route is that I can dive in on writing heavy action. I can get right into what these people are doing now to survive in a life radically different from our own. And I can easily fall into the trap of writing genre fiction. That trap would be that I am worried more about the world, than I am worried about developing good characters.

Moving forward I think my top priority is to save myself from the easy pitfalls of genre fiction. I put the start of the story sometime sooner, such as as everything is plunking along and my character is just now thrown into turmoil, or shortly thereafter. This will force me to deal with them as characters dealing with real reactions. After all, at any moment there could be a cataclysmic attack of comments life is we know it could cease; we will be forced to make top choices.

Of course, but also creates it's own dilemmas. There are many tropes common in this kind of fiction. The most classic, of course is the "There's only so much room in the lifeboat folks, so we're only going to take five of you. Let's pick the five people out of the 50 that are going to live on."

Part of me knows I will have to deal with that at some point, but do I want that to be one of the early clichés that the people see me using?

At any rate, things are plugging along very well. If this story, or the style, is at all fascinating I do encourage you to look over open auditions post.

Casting Call: Actors for Sci Fi Story

I am developing a web serial that will follow the exploits of the last of humanity as they fight to survive in the midst of an alien-driven Apocalypse.  I am seeking actors and actresses to provide audio interviews, video journals, and other multimedia as part of the evolving story.  The story will be posted online in weekly installments which will range from prose, to journals to multimedia files.

Compensation will be negotiated on an individual basis.

Interested parties should be able to:

Take web-cam based videos of themselves in "survival" costume with a neutral or dark background.Work with a one week turn-around scheduleBe over the age of 18Of any race, ethnicity or gender.I am most interested in those able to speak languages other than English, have military experience, or are willing to work in an advisory role in addition to their acting duties.
Please send inquiries to MrOsterman92(at)gmail dot com.