Writing Report July 15, 2022

The late Steve Gerber once paid me a whopping compliment:

“Buzz Dixon is the only person I know
who can write a 45-page fight scene
without repeating himself once.”

Action has always been easy for me to write.  As a kid I grew up with B-Westerns, serials, and monster movies on TV; I learned fairly quickly how to move things along in a story.

Other skills -- characterization / dialog, /theme / etc. -- acquired later, but action was always in my wheelhouse.

There’s a scene in my current Work In Progress (well, two chapters, actually, but since it’s one continuous bit of action let’s refer to it as a scene) that while a comedy illustrates how I use action, and how action can be used to help tie a story together and reinforce it thematically.

The premise for my WIP shows my protagonists engaged in a scheme of dubious legality.

To pull this off they need to use some real world technology, not stuff you can buy in a department store, but professional grade equipment.

They gain access to such equipment (without the owners’ knowledge or permission, of course) and I could have just continued with my story that way, focusing just on what they did with the equipment.

But where’s the fun in that?

From my research, I knew the technology in question needs to be constant recalibrated and maintained.

Unauthorized usage would soon be reveal by a rise in replacement parts, so now my protagonists face another complication on the way to their goal:  Where do they get the spare parts?

The parts are readily available -- to the professional market.  While small and relatively portable, they’re also expensive, and my protagonists aren’t exactly flush with cash.

Luckily, the manufacturer of said parts is local.

Now, before you think that’s a deus ex machina happy coincidence, guess again.  The manufacturer already plays a significant part in the story.  Tying them n even more tightly by robbing them only reinforces the theme of the book.

Now, all this came about in the rough outline portion of the story (and in this case the rough outline is entirely in me widdle head.)

At that point in the process, I entertained a vague idea that my main protagonists would somehow be involved in the actual robbery.

But once the actual writing process began, I found new possibilities opening up.

Sidebar:
Decades ago I discovered I tended to plot subconsciously, the back of my brain seeing things I’d need long before I was aware of them.  When was writing an animation script, if I threw in what appeared to be an absolutely extraneous detail in Act One (such as noting a lamp on a table when describing a room for the first time) then by the time I got to Act Three that lamp would be absolutely crucial in resolving the story!

It happened more times than I can recount, and I learned from bitter experience that if I ignored or suppressed that subconscious influence, I would absolutely end up regretting it by the time I got to the end of the script.

Fairly early in my WIP my main protagonist is menaced by three teenagers, only to be saved by the timely arrival and introduction of one of the other protagonists.

It’s clear from the way I wrote the scene that the three young men knew who this protagonist was and that they’re better show him due respect and listen to what he says.

That protagonist, who is eventually shown to be a mid-range gangster, is the one I planned to lead the robbery, but as I started getting closer to that scene, I realized he never risk his neck in something like that, but he’d recruit somebody to do it for him; i.e., the three teens we already met.

But wait! 
There’s more!

How will they know where the aforementioned parts are located in a large factory?  It’s logical to assume they’d be in the shipping room, where they can be boxed up and sent out, but how would the teens know where the shipping room was?

One character in the story works for the manufacturer, he’s somewhat smitten by one of my female protagonists.  She calls him up and wrangles a tour of the factory…

…and that both reinforces the tension between them as well as the importance of the factory to the story.

Every little bit helps.

Next comes the question of how the teens will enter the factory.  It’s a standard factory, high concrete walls, doors and loading docks locked at night.  There are windows but they’re the eave kind that are high up and tilt out.

You’d need a ladder and somebody real skinny to get into the shipping room.

So we recruit one of
the teen’s kid sister.

Now we’ve got a ticking clock -- they need the parts fast -- and the teens and the kid sister have to break into the building that night.

They simply can’t drive up through the main gate, they’ve got to sneak across a farm adjacent to the factory, make their way across the parking lot, prop a ladder up against the wall, and send the kid sister in.

Ladder.

That means they need a truck, so the one teen who has a driver’s license is the wheelman and he stays with the truck while the other two and kid sister head off to commit the crime.

Now we can start adding complications, anything and everything to throw a monkey wrench into their plans.

Start by getting from the side of the road where they’re dropped off to the field they need to cross to reach the factory.

What do you typically find beside the shoulder of rural roads?

That’s right: 
A ditch.

The teens jump across it easily but kid sister falls short, getting her feet muddy.

Problem: 
This might leave a clue the police can follow.

They make their way across the field and spy on the factory, waiting for the nightwatchman to make his rounds, then sneaking across the parking lot --

No, wait:  The gravel parking lot.

-- to prop up the ladder and send the kid sister in.

She can’t go in with muddy shoes and socks so she takes them off, dries off her feet, and scurries in.

She gets through the window no problem and turns on her penlight to find the storage bins where the necessary parts are kept.

They’re right there, in the middle of the room.

Inside a floor to ceiling chain link cage.

Well, she’s not going to give up; she’s been promised a nice chunk of cash if she pulls this off so she looks for a way in.

There’s a narrow gap between the top of the cage door and the ceiling so she climbs up and slithers in.

Now things proceed smoothly.  She has a list of the necessary parts, the bins are clearly labeled, she starts scooping them up --

The nightwatchman enters the room.

He doesn’t see her from his vantage point.  As he walks around the room she needs to move along the opposite side of the bins, keeping them between her and the nightwatchman.

He decides everything is okay and leaves, locking the door behind him.

Kid sister finishes gathering the parts, signals for the teens hiding in the nearby field, they hurry over with the ladder and she climbs down –

Where are her shoes?

The dopes left them in the field.

Kid sister needs to run barefoot across the gravel parking lot to get back to the truck so they can make their getaway.

Why is that a crucial detail?

It sets up a joke to end the scene with -- a joke that while amusing also reinforces the fact the gangster is not someone to trifle with.

The two chapters run 2,268 words.

I wrote them in an hour and a half.

For me, the mechanics are always the easiest part, my biggest challenge lay in finding distinctive voices for the three teens and the kid sister.

I’m just past the 50K mark right now.  I’m aiming for a first draft in the 80-85K range that in the rewrite and polish can be trimmed to 70-75K.

At my current rate, I should finish my first draft come mid-August.

© Buzz Dixon