by David Niall Wilson
I find myself in an odd position, at least odd for me. I almost always approach the plotting and creation of a new novel by starting with one element and branching out. For instance, when I wrote “The Mote in Andrea’s Eye,” it was because Trish asked me “Why have no hurricanes disappeared into The Bermuda Triangle?” When I wrote “Ancient Eyes,” I started with the desire to expand on the hill folk that were depicted in the movie Next of Kin. I wrote “The Fall of the House of Escher” because of the title. In every case, one thing led to the next, and I was ready to rock and roll. The rest of those stories fell into place almost magically.
Now I have one that is refusing to fit the mold. It started with the good old ‘what if?’ foundation that has served me so well in the past. I’m going to share some things here and hope that, if someone sees it and takes it before I get it into print, you’ll all remember where you heard it first. Hell, for reasons you’re about to read, I may never get the first line completed anyway.
I’ve seen a number of movies in recent years where the premise involves some form of time travel, or dimension shifting. I’ve read a ton of articles and commentaries on genetic research, DNA, and genetic memory. It all sort of gelled when I watched the recent movie DÉJÀ VU, and I thought…if the mind is a computer, and DNA is data, and the mind can access that data…what if the mind of one person could tap into the data in another person’s DNA? There was my ‘what if?’ - and I was off and running.
My basic premise came easy. There is a detective. He loses his partner in a particularly nasty crime that goes unsolved. Someone approaches the detective and explains that they might be able to help. They introduce him to a research group - very hush hush - that is working on just what I ‘what iffed’ upstream. They have found a way to allow someone, for a short period of time, to tap into the genetic memory recorded on another person’s DNA.
Here’s the thing. Even though this gives you theoretical access to a crime - assuming you can snag the proper DNA specimen from your victim, for instance - you can still only know what that person knew. You don’t’ get a magic window to the killer. You might also gain memories and knowledge from ancestors of the person you bonded with. In my version of this, the bond is tenuous and begins to break down after about forty-eight hours. This, then, would be the basic body / scope of a novel about this particular detective…he has 48 hours to solve a crime using bits and pieces of memory and knowledge known to one person from the crime scene…maybe time to do a second if he recovers fast enough, but of course there will be some danger in the process…reasons to go slow, and easy with it. It gives the detective an edge, but not everything.
When I got this far I thought to myself, self - this would make a great novel series, not to mention a TV drama series and a heck of a movie - very Philip K. Dicksian…very cool.
So I thought I’d sit down and write an outline and plot out the first book / pilot / whatever it turned out to be. I thought that several months ago. I don’t know the exact date, but my agent could possibly tell you as I sent him the idea almost immediately, all full of how I was going to set the world on fire - like I get from time to time. If you’re reading this, Bob, I bet you remember. That’s when it started to twist out of my grip, and that’s why I’m writing this essay on this topic, hoping that it will gel - come to life for me in some way I’ve missed, and allow me to plow on.
The problem is simple. When it came down to putting together the crime that would be solved -the crime that took the detective’s partner, or brother, or wife, or whatever, the damnable unsolvable crime was going to be…I had / have nothing. It would seem like almost any crime would do, but it won’t. It has to be something with levels of subtlety that can be brought out through bonding with the memories of the victim, who obviously didn’t see it coming, or they would not BE a victim. It has to be tragic enough to make a detective risk job, sanity, and his life to find the answer to it. In point of fact, what I’ve learned about this book is that it isn’t about the ‘what if?’ at all, but about the crime, and I didn’t bother to provide myself with such a crime when I was getting excited over my great new idea. In fact, I didn’t even bother to warn myself just how hard crafting that perfect crime might be, or how integral it was to the whole shooting match…
So here I sit, great whopping ‘what if?’ in hand, pounding my noggin on the desktop in search of the perfect crime. The moral of my story? Simply this…
Processes are imperfect, recalcitrant, hateful things that evolve very slowly into something unreliable enough to make you scream…and they are the foundation of our words. Be careful not to get too comfortable with the way yours works, because it’s a whole lot harder to revise that process mid-stream if you don’t keep your eyes open for possible pitfalls, and if you trust what has come before to lead you through what happens next.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find the perfect crime - and solve it backwards to my opening line.
-DNW
19 Comments, Comment or Ping
Janet Berliner
A fantastic concept. I’d research until I found a real unsolved crime that tugged at my gut and go from there. Then again, I always like to work within a factual or historical framework. Hope you find the answer. –J.
Apr 30th, 2008
eric wilson
Man, do I relate to learning and relearning that each novel takes a different path for me. That’s part of the fun, the mystery, the delight–and the part that makes it so frustrating!
But hey, that’s what keeps it all interesting, right? God, my wife, my daughters, creativity…They’re all so hard to grasp, so unbelievable, so improbably wonderful and aggravating, that they keep me on my toes.
I hope the right crime sneaks into your dreams or waking hours soon, very soon.
May 1st, 2008
Dave Wilson
Thanks Janet, and I’ve already decided this one is staying right where it is until I’m sure the crime is right, but it’s ITCHY having an idea that wants out…so hopefully soon.
Eric…as Alma would have said, I think, you can’t grasp the ethereal, but if you concentrate you can see their shadows clearly.
D
May 1st, 2008
Gerard Houarner
Man that’s tough and frustrating - you’re so close! Also quite a revelation to discover the novel is not about what you thought it was — hate when that happens. Sounds like you’re looking for some kind of noirish/Greek tragedy secret desire/flaw type of thing in your victim’s past? Anyway, keep at it, you’ll get it! (Besides gangsters, only writers would encourage each other to think like criminals — but it is part of the job!)
May 1st, 2008
Thomas Sullivan
Well,I may have a spin on that for you, Davey. Because, as it turns out, I wrote a similar story in 1992 centered around a different application. The story, “Cues from and Angry Deity,” was published in John Maclay’s VOICES FROM THE NIGHT, a 1994 hardcover collection. I used an RNA tap that allowed parents to explore why their 9-year old daughter committed suicide. It was all back story after the event, and it included a lot of marital dysfunction, uncertainty over whether it was working at all (because the memories were ambiguous but were finally nailed in an epiphany), and a very human ending in which one character lies in an active kindness to another (radiant deceit). The story got one rave within the field, but I think was better known outside. It has been used in classrooms both at the college and high school level, I’ve heard. The answer to your plot dilemma may lie less with a perfect crime than with an imperfect memory tap — something in the nature of the technology, after all it is as ephemeral as human memory — and the ambiguities and ambivalence you can create out of it…
– Sully
May 1st, 2008
Thomas Sullivan
I see I’ve mis-titled my short story. It’s: “Cues from an Angry Deity,” not “…and Angry…”
Ah, well, I once mis-titled my short tale “Phantom of the Rainbow” as “Phantom of the Raincow”…
– Sully
May 1st, 2008
Dave Wilson
I’m guessing you’d get some mad cows out of that Raincow story…
Thanks guys, and yeah, it’s imperfect in several ways…they only know what the victim knew (or thought they knew) and their only real advantage is that they know that someone will kill the victim, when, and how…finding the clues to WHO is the key…
May 1st, 2008
Brian Hodge
Seems like you’re treading close enough to an existing phenomenon that you’ll have to address it in the novel … and reading up on it may spark some tangents you hadn’t considered: instances where the recipient of an organ transplant begins to manifest certain traits of the donor, even though the person was a complete stranger, or know something that person knew.
There seems to be enough far-flung anecdotes about this to at least raise an eyebrow, and of course it all begs the questions: Are these traits knitted into the tissue at a molecular level, or do they belong to some unmeasureable energy field?
At any rate, you have a lot of guts to put this incomplete idea out there like a piece of fruit that anyone could pick!
May 1st, 2008
Dave Wilson
There are a lot of ways to go with it…I doubt if anything I do will end up too close to what a thief might get away with, but if that happened, I have my time-stamp here and all of you to back my claim…
In all seriousness…I expect to write this soon.
D
May 1st, 2008
Janet Berliner
Brian, I wrote one like that: “Interveiw with a Mutant.” It was in the anthology ‘The Mutant Files.’ –J
May 1st, 2008
John B Rosenman
Dave, your novel reminds me a bit of a novel I read a couple years back called EIGHTEEN SECONDS. If the person just touched a dead body, she could tap into the last eighteen seconds of the dead person’s life. I know that’s not precisely what you have in mind, but it’s somewhat similar, and a fairly common premise.
I hope you find your perfect crime. Hmm, when your detective is interfaced with the DNA, could he come across yet another person’s DNA somehow that complicates the situation? So he gets two sets of confusing memories. Perhaps the crime involved stealing DNA or some biochemical element in the human brain that is the repository of the human soul, the Seat of a Person’s Identity. That would be even more advanced and radical than the DNA idea.
But I don’t think that’s the crime you’re seeking. I wish you luck. And I’ll probably be pondering your problem. Will let you know if I come up with anything else.
May 1st, 2008
Dave Wilson
I’ve thought of several things that could happen like that John…one being that the DNA sample they get isn’t from the right person…one where he taps into the killer and is traumatized…one where a sample from a crime is from a relative, and he gets a warped double past memory from dual perspectives…the 18 seconds thing is interesting…reminded me instantly of that new show I love - Pushing Dasies, where the guy can bring someone back to life by touching them, but if touches them again, they die again…if he doesn’t let them die in a 60 second period, something else dies in their place.
And then there was 7 Days - the TV series where the guy could go back in the past 7 days to prevent something from happening…
It’s not really new, just a new way of looking at it. Reading a book by Stephen Hawking right now in search of just the right hooks.
May 2nd, 2008
Alexandra Sokoloff
It’s a great premise, Dave. You might get some ideas about how the answer is right there in the confusing memories from THE GIFT OF FEAR - great NF book to read anyway on how we all have much more instinct that we give ourselves credit for.
Don’t you think ALL novels have hidden story problems that you don’t anticipate until you’re actually in the thick of it? That’s the way it’s been for me, so far. It’s completely reinventing the wheel, every single time.
May 2nd, 2008
Thomas Sullivan
Man, this is an education. And you’re right, Davey, there is nothing new under the sun. What’s this show “Pushing Daisies” you’re talking about? I watch very little TV, but I guess this is cable? Which I don’t have? Before I go on, let me say that I once wrote a story whose elaborate premise I discovered (thank God, before I published mine) had already been published by someone else. I guess stand-alone ideas are almost impossible, and that’s another reason to celebrate the unique handling of ideas rather than their generalities. Okay, that said, I mentioned my RNA tap story above, and at risk of sounding like a paranoid broken record, this dual touch thing bringing life or death in “Pushing Daisies” reminds me of another story of mine, “A Night at the Head of Grave,” which came out in a Charles L. Grant collection SHADOWS 8 in 1985. Par for the course when you work in an industry of ideas. But you have to rue not being in the right place at the right time when you see that an idea has been bankrolled and is succeeding beyond where your use of it went.
– Sully
May 2nd, 2008
Dave Wilson
Sully, the Pushing Daisies is a comdey - pretty sure it’s British in nature, and on, it’s Network TV - it started strong, but the writer’s strike hit…I think it’s coming back next year, but it’s initial season was cut short. It’s very odd…very funny and tongue-in-cheek…probably there is a similarity there, but not (maybe) as strong as you are thinking.
Yeah…it’s hard not to wonder why THEIRS and not yours…
but much like quantum physics…the guy who first thought of it isn’t the only one who can write about it…the magic is in HOW you write about it…
D
May 2nd, 2008
Thomas Sullivan
Davey. Comedy? Definitely a different spin. Yeah, HOW you write about it is everything. Which I was trying to say with, “…and that’s another reason to celebrate the unique handling of ideas rather than their generalities.” Thanks, amigo.
– Sully
May 2nd, 2008
Dave Wilson
Oh, I know, Sully ol’ Bean. I was just handling it uniquely
May 2nd, 2008
James Goodman
It sounds like a great premise, Dave. As far as the perfect crime. Perhaps, if you just took a moment, stepped away from the story, let your mind be occupied by something completely of a different nature and after a few days, (or aweek, whatever it takes) sit down and think about all of the horrific crimes that you’ve been exposed to through news or even word of mouth. I’m sure there will be one that stands out far from the others as really getting under your skin.
That’s your crime. Take it, twist it, make it your own, but you already have a certain amount of vested emotion in the act that will surely carry through into the tale and quite possibly effect the reader as it did you.
It is an intersting dilemma though…
May 2nd, 2008
James Goodman
or you know… something that sounds a whole lot less like a newbie, trying to take on a topic like he really knows what he’s talking about.
May 2nd, 2008
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