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

Entry: On Suspicion of Evil Intent - A87737205
Author: GregPius - U13648184

This story has been rewritten by me many times. It still lacks something. I can't seem to get it just right.

Greg, what you've written is a brilliant outline to a murder mystery, a story of crime and punishment, wrong and revenge. Great themes.

You probably know the creative writing mantra 'don't tell, show'. What you need to do is show us the scenes, take us there - from the hero pacing the hopital corridor, waiting for news of his girlfriend, to the scene where the ex-husband falls to his death from the cliff.

It's a lot of work, because you need masses of authentic-feeling detail.

You know, Greg, you could make a genre out of these things: Story outlines.

If you set up a frame tale for them - 'From the Archives of a Scriptwriter', or some such...

This is the problem with all my story ideas. If I try to structure a longer version of them, the original creative brilliance disappers. I have no talent to "flesh out" these stories. That's why I call them either, FAST STORIES, or, STORY IDEAS! As I wrote elsewhere, I am happy for anyone to take these undeveloped stories and make then their own by turning them into short stories, plays or even drama scripts. I am just the one who outlines the story. Others can freely take these outlines and make them what they can. Such writers would have my full support. I have over one hundred of these story ideas.

That's an excellent idea. I am not sure I deserve the title "scriptwriter" but "plot originator" would be okay.

Maybe some intrepid AWWers will come along with a fleshed-out version, too. That's a great idea, Greg.

Perhaps we ought to have a space somewhere where we could try out plot ideas for comment, before we get in too deep.

So if you have an idea for a thriller about uranium smuggling, for example , you could try it out on people, before you had to set out doing masses of research.

Got a whole long story about drug smuggling but that's being done to death (no pun intended). Hard to find an original genre. My plot on uranium smuggling would centre around the global clearing centre for illicit uranium. I am guessing somewhere in Africa. The trade involves a side deal on child slaves. The uranium is packed in containers marked "Coca beans" and the ships are under the flag of convenience of Burma
(or whatever it is called now). The smugglers get their uranium from Nigeria but it is sourced out of Belarus. Buyers are "on sellers" whose clients remain a secret until the very end. Of course various government officials have been bribed and the Captain of the container ship is part of the smugglers cartel. But that's all I got.

My story starts with a government scientist (an expert in water pollution) meeting a former colleague in St James's Park. She tells him that an environmental activist they both knew has been found murdered, and asks him to keep an ear open for suspicious cases of pollution. She now works for MI5.

That's as far as I got. One scene.

But that's the challenge for the writer. Think up a plot. Develop some characters. And then fill out your story with scenes, and narrative, to form what John Gardner, in 'The Art of Fiction' calls 'a vivid and continuous dream'.

I'm not sure it's talent you need -just application.

How about this approach?

You get the characters, and that first scene, and then let them tell you where it goes from there?

Just thinking aloud.

I could do my first scene because I've been to St James's Park, met a few pollution specialists, could imagine the encounter.

I imagined my specialist being slightly Aspergic - a socially awkward nerd. He is attracted to his former colleague, a young woman who's been recruited by MI5 because her parents were Ukrainian and she still has contacts there.

But, if I was going to write the rest I would need to know about uranium, who might want to smggle it, where from, how and why.

That's where the hard graft starts.

Yeah, and then you get lost in the research, and write an entirely different story.

Can I suggest a touch of realism. You have the EU and the UN trying to stop Iran from continuing with its uranium enrichment program. Make the uranium come from an existing stockpile, there are at least five countries that have such stockpiles. Now a "middle eastern" diplomat meets with your scientist. He will be used as the front man for this operation. Meanwhile an Mi5 operative, Kavita, has intercepted an SMS message from this diplomat. She asks permiassion to follow up her lead. The Mi5 middle eastern ops manager, agrees with one condition, Kavita must use their middle eastern expert, mister J, as a mentor. the young woman resents this but realises that she has no choice but to agree to this condition. Kavita plans to exclude the mysterious mister J as much as possible. No way will she allow him to participate in the capture of the scientist. To give it a real "spy versus hunter" flavour include a subplot where Kavita, a married woman, falls in love with an older Italian man, Theo. Their affair distracts her just at the wrong moment and she almost loses her job. A scene in a coffee shop shows the affair with Theo falling apart as Kavita tries to get Theo to commit to a simple dinner date. Kavita becomes what she has always hated, a woman clinging to a man who has used her for sex and just wants out.
Touch on themes of diplomatic immunity with the diplomat leaving the UK carrying the details of the uranium purchase in the diplomatic bag. Bring in some comedy touches by having an inept CIA operative trying to interfere in the op and win all the credit for the good old USA. Expose the absurd nature of international espionage by having the European spy agencies chasing up the middle eastern diplomat, as her tries to make his way through various European cities, whilst members of Mossad try to kill the diplomat, without success.
Make it stark by having a terrorist organisation planting a "dirty" nuclear device on a warship going into the Persian Gulf. There can also be an attempt to blow up a major Suadi Arabian oil refinery. Both attempts are once again exposed thank to Kavita's extraordinary skills in intercepting secret SMS messages. She is reluctant to share this information with her boss because she suspects that he is "bent"-bought and paid for with Russian petro dollars.

That's all I can suggests.