h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Project - A40692242
Author: Tibley Bobley - U170471

Back to the horror. Sorry

Thank you for reading.

Well-written, and chilling. Good detail. Great idea with the biolab.

But I think something is missing.

This is the *idea* of a story, the backdrop, the plot device. Where is the development?

I think you either need to make the development be that we, the readers, find out what the scientist is up to ourselves, or that you tell us, and then have a twist in which he is either thwarted, or helped to succeed.

There is one other thing that is missing: some kind of motivation for this man to kill himself with the intent of destroying the human race.

I realise this sort of stuff happens - there are two missing towers in New York City, after all.

But why is this fella feeding the pigs?

There is a very good short story by a Chinese writer - unfortunately, I don't know the name, as I heard it read on the radio - about a college professor during the Cultural Revolution who is so outraged about his mistreatment at the hands of the government's petty tyrants that he exacts a terrible revenge.

Having been thrown into jail at somebody else's whim, the professor contracts hepatitis. Before leaving the city, he has soup in a number of restaurants with questionable cleanliness. An epidemic breaks out.

I remember this story years after having heard it read aloud. It was scary to be inside that man's mind.

Don't know if any of this feedback helps.

Thank you dmitri

Story development. I'll give it some thought and see what I can do

Motivation. Okay. Will do.

Pigs. I wondered about putting in technical details but decided not to bother the reader with them. I can though. There was a really big outbreak here in 2001. At that time they said on the news that the virus was generated/multiplied in pigs at about 10 times (I think) the rate that it was in cows. They were described as virus factories.

Yes, your feedback always helps. It certainly does!

Pigs. The virus (I forgot to mention) was "foot and mouth" of course (not "hoof and mouth" by the way, which is something different, I understand).

My memory!

This is chilling.

I agree with Dmitri that your scientist needs a pretty strong motive -like being a member of some doomsday cult.

I'm not enough of a scientist to say whether the plot you describe is likely to succeed. This leads me to a question that worries me when I try to write anything- do I need to do any research? The better informed a story is the more likely it is to sound convincing, particularly to a reader who does know the field. You might be an expert, but, if you're not, did you do any research?

Know what you mean about the research mVpoet. That's the main reason I decided to try my hand at supernatural stories. I don't really know very much about very much and with horror and ghost stories, you can make up any old nonsense so long as you make it interesting and you can make it seem superficially plausible. I've read plenty of sci-fi books where I've been tempted to throw the thing out of the window in disgust at the stupidity of it all. But I like sci-fi when it's done reasonably well and I'm prepared to have a go if I have, or can get, enough information to make it seem vaguely possible. Like the parallel universes story. I know nothing about parallel universes. Who does? And I don't know whether this latest mad plot of mine could ever be possible, but it seems to me just the sort of thing that some nut-case would be likely to try. Wasn't there something on the news the other day about the anthrax attacks that killed several Americans a year or so ago, being pinned on one of the scientists responsible for investigating the attacks? What was his motive, I wonder. Perhaps he was just a nut-case.

I think I have a motive for the man now, but the thing is to get it into the story without interrupting the flow.


A confession dmitri This just goes to show what a complete ignoramus I am about story writing: I've had no success googling "story development", trying to work out which part of the story is the development. I'm sure I must need to get a book on writing. It's only quite recently that I found out what "over-written" meant. They sound too self explanatory to require explanation and I feel stupid asking, but you'd think it would be possible to find some straight-forward definitions on the great big world wide web, wouldn't you?

Sorry for the delay. I've had a go at resolving some of the problems with this. There's a new second section in which there's some idea of the man, how he thinks, what motivates him. The infection of the pigs has been expanded with some explanation. The only part that hasn't undergone changes is the first section.

I can understand Charlie feeling that the earth would be better off without the human race, but it's quite a big jump from that to feeling that he has to be the person to wipe it out.

So I think that the paragraphs of justification are too rational, too much like a lecture. They need to sound more crazed, more full of hate: maybe it would help if you put some of this in inverted commas and made it self-talk.

I can see what Dmitri means when he says that the story needs development. We want to know what happens next - does he succeed in killing off the human race or does something stop him?

I meant to change it to GuideML and put his thoughts in italics but, for reasons I won't bore you with, I wasn't up the job at the weekend. I'll try to get that sorted out asap.

When I first wrote it, I thought it would just be assumed that the man was mad, with no further reason required, because the world seems to be full of mad folk that do mad things for no fathomable reason that would make sense to rational people. But when dmitri asked for a motive, I thought I'd better think of a convincing one.

His reasons for doing what he's doing make sense to *him* but he wouldn't expect us to see it the way he does. The man is an MOD scientist, trusted with lethal materials. If he couldn't put together a logical (sounding) reason for his behaviour - one that seemed at least superficially rational - how could he ever have got that job? How could he have kept the job? The American scientist they suspect of sending out the anthrax must have seemed normal (I imagine). Surely they wouldn't let an obvious nut-case mess about with anthrax spoors. So I'm not sure it makes sense to have him seem as though he's just plain bonkers. I have tried to give some sense that he suspects himself of having a bit of a split personality.

I thought I'd leave the ending open - with the outside possibility that he might just succeed. But viruses mutating as they do and immune systems adjusting as they do, the probability is that he'll fail.

I'll give it a bit more thought

Just a tip, HIV is a retrovirus, which means it has RNA, not DNA. Do you have a vague understanding of how these diseases all work, or did you just pick the nastiest ones?

Thanks Still_WRD. "Vague" is the key word there. Just what I hear on the news really - and even then, only what I can remember of what I hear on the news. As I mentioned somewhere in the posts above, I have no idea whether this sort of thing is possible. I'll take out the HIV. Cheers.

I don't know any mass murderers, I hope

But I'm sure that 'mad' doesn't necessarily mean dangerous, nor does dangerous mean 'mad'. I've read that the London suicide bombers are believed to have been sane, rational young men. They had just been convinced by a radical group that it was acceptable to kill civilians in the course of what they saw as a global war.

But they were part of a radical group. I really don't know how a lone maverick like Charlie would think.

You've put your finger squarely on the problem I have with this mVpoet. The way I write stories is just so simple: an idea pops into my head and I spit it out and post it as a Guide Entry. Then, if I post some of them to AWW, people make me think about them and they turn out not to be so straight-forward as I thought. It's ridiculously interesting. It really makes me think about things. This man was just supposed to be one of the fruit-cakes - a bit brainier than average and a bit more focused, but nevertheless a nut. Then you force me to think about that, come up with a motive, think about the kind of mind that could be so cold and driven - and then, all of a sudden, it's big and complicated instead of small and simple. Not every act of mass murder can be written off as madness. Just because a person's views about the value of life don't coincide with our own, it doesn't mean they are any less sane than we are. If it's mad to kill innocent people then war is insane and we'd better lock up our government. I'm still thinking about how I can make this story make better sense. Though it'll be hard, if not impossible, to make it make more sense than real life (which has never made a lot of sense to me)

Thank you for taking the trouble to prod me into thinking about things. I do appreciate it, even if I don't always respond as quickly as I should or in the best way.

Just a thought:

One way to approach finding a motive for the unthinkable is to watch good actors faced with the same dilemma - portraying a seemingly rational person doing something horrible.

As an aid to the discussion, I recommend taking the time to view 'Conspiracy', a British-made television programme about the Wannsee Conference.

Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of Reinhard Heydrich (for which he won an award, I believe) is a study in avoiding all the cliches and finding something which the actor himself does not have in him (as evinced by the way he lives his life).

It's amazing.

I'm a firm believer in the ability to learn technique across genres.

I think the big trick is to place the character in the situation, follow his actions closely...

...and leave the moralising for later, if at all.

Thanks dmitri

It sounds like excellent advice and I'll try to follow it. I've searched for the DVD at all the usual places where I buy DVDs but it's hard to come by. There are no new ones (and it only came out in 2001) and the second hand sellers are asking exorbitant prices for them. It looks as though it would be well worth watching too. There are lots of enthusiastic reviews of it, praising it to the rafters. I'll keep an eye on the situation and if they become available (at a reasonable price) I'll snap one up.

Do you folks have an equivalent of our Netflix? For a monthly fee, you have a lending library of DVDs...

That's how I see these things.

I just did a search for a UK netflix. It doesn't look as though they have a branch here. Amazon provides a hire service but then you have to post the DVDs back to them. I live in one of those middle of nowheres. Getting to the post office is a bit of a palaver, so I've always bought rather than hired DVDs.

A mobile library visits the village and I wouldn't be surprised if they might lend DVDs. Trouble with that is, I'm usually at work when the van visits. And I work in an even more remote middle of nowhere

Wow. You guys need to enter the Century of the Fruit Bat.

Netflix saves me money, and satisfies my curiosity. The DVDs come in returnable envelopes.

The problem is that neighbours in the apartment complex are fully capable of 'borrowing' the DVDs on their way home...

So we walk the returns down to the office, and they go straight into the post.

Fingers crossed for your mobile library, though.

Mobile Library! That's adorable! I didn't know they still existed...I've heard of them, though.
Bah, showing my age again, it's like the time I astonished my professor by not being able to remember the Wisconsin quaterback who came before Bret Favre...

The mobile library stops outside the village school at 2pm, every other Tuesday. Next visit 7 October. If I can get to it then, I'll let you know the outcome

In the meantime, without the benefit of the excellent Ken, I've had a go at exposing Charlie's mind. I've tried for bleak and confused. Neurotic rather than psychotic. Is it getting any closer to being believable?