Underwood, Scotch, and Cry

by Brian Meeks

  "And how were the books?"

  "I loved them. They're well-written, professional in the editing and cover design, and most importantly, they're fun."

  "And how did that make you write more quickly?"

  "Well, they talk about writing beats. It seems, at least when Sean and Johnny work on a project, that Sean writes the beats and Johnny takes those beats, and from it he crafts the novels."

  "What's a beat?"

  "It's sort of somewhere between writing an outline and a novel. Sean writes descriptions in broad terms about what's happening in each scene."

  "That seems like it's adding work to the process."

  "I have to admit, that's what I thought, too, but he doesn't just do beats; he creates character biographies and figures out the scene locations."

  "Okay, that sounds like a ton of work. I'm more looking for a magic solution that requires no effort."

  "Tough! Have you ever forgotten a minor character's name and had to look it up?"

  "Oh, I hate that. When it happens I usually stop writing and start drinking."

  "So, how much time do you lose?"

  "I see your point, if there are notes somewhere, then I can just look it up."

  "Actually, I just found this great app, Storyist, that lets me keep all my details straight so I have my characters and settings always with me, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The point is, I can spend two days writing beats, character descriptions, and scene locations and then start writing."

  "I don't know if I want to be locked in to an outline. I've always been a pantser."

  "I'm a pantser at heart, and that's the beauty of the beats. I wrote them, and I can choose to follow the story as I planned it out, or if I have a better idea long the way, run with it."

  Arthur started to pace again. "You're right, I've done that before, get an idea and start writing toward that point in the story only to find a better one along the way. What happened the first time you tried it?"

  "Are you sure you want to know?"

  "Why?"

  "It might bruise your fragile male ego."

  "That fast."

  "Yep."

  "I want to know."

  "The first time I tried it, I completed my novel in twelve days. It was just over 50,000 words."

  "You were right. My ego has been bruised. Will you kiss it and make it better?"

  Kat sashayed up to Arthur and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Winifred cringed as James screamed and yelled. He had just read the first ten chapters that his minions had pumped out at record pace and declared it cat piss. "Are you kidding me? In chapter four, one of these simpletons ended the last sentence with a preposition!"

  "That's an easy fix."

  "I want them in here now. Call the monkeys..."

  "But you said they could have a day off when the first..."

  "I said call the monkeys, damn it!" He stormed off to his bedroom.

  She called Billy first. He wasn't thrilled to be summoned. Sue was next to get the bad news. She wasn't even remotely surprised. Maren's phone had gone to voicemail. Smart girl, Winifred thought.

  The pages of the first ten chapters were thrown about the family room. Winifred gathered each one up and put the chapters back into order. She read the first page and thought it was fine. It didn't necessarily sound like James's voice, but she figured he would put his touches on it later, once he didn't hate it.

  Working for James was awful on most days; this latest adventure was gut wrenching because she worried about Billy, Sue, and Maren. He had beaten them down. Lifelong scars on their psyche seemed possible, if not probable.

  Just two days before, when Maren had written a scene of dialog between the protagonist and one of the minor characters that had elicited a laugh from everyone else, James had stormed in and accused them all of slacking. He told her the dialog sucked and to cut it.

  Billy had worked out details of every single character's back story. He wrote up cards and put them on a board so Sue and Maren could easily reference them if needed. It was James's opinion that Billy should be writing actual story, and he called him several names that Winifred didn't like to even replay in her head.

  It was just mean. She made sure to always get really good food for lunch and dinner and put it on James's card. It was the least he could do.

  Winifred's phone started to buzz. She looked down; it was Maren. "Hey, Maren."

  "I saw you called. Is it bad news?"

  "Chapter four was ended with a preposition and..."

  "Oh, I'm so sorry. Did he go nuts?"

  "Yes."

  "I should have caught that yesterday. Let me guess, he has canceled the day off?"

  "I've already told Billy and Sue; they're on their way. I'm sorry your day got ruined."

  "It's no big deal. We all guessed this would happen, and at least I got to sleep in until nine. I'll be over shortly."

  "Thanks, Maren. You're the best."

  "Winny! Where are my shoes?" bellowed James.

  "They're by the couch."

  "Not those! My tennis shoes."

  Winifred went on an apartment-wide hunt and found them exactly where they always were, in his closet next to his tennis rackets. She had mistakenly assumed he had checked there first. It was a rookie mistake. She took them to him in the kitchen.

  "Where are those damn tennis rackets?"

  "I'll get them."

  She set the bag with the rackets next to the kitchen table and asked, "Are you going to stay and give notes to your assistants?"

  "I'm going to give my notes to you, and you'll pass them along. The first ten chapters are a pile of horse shit. Get it right, you idiots."

  "Maybe if you wrote a little bit, they would get a better feel for what you want?"

  "Genre writing is for monkeys. That's why I hired them. Now, I'm off to the club."

  Arthur called Barry. "How's it going?"

  "I'm not in the mood to write today."

  "Why's that?"

  "I don't know. I guess I've been going pretty hard, and the ideas have dried up."

  "I feel ya, buddy. I'm not sure my idea for the novel is going to work out."

  "You want to just hang out? Maybe we can help each other?"

  "That's exactly what I need. It's too nice a day to spend in the coffee shop anyway. I had a great talk with Kat yesterday. I think I'm going to try writing beats."

  "Cool. I don't know what that is, but it sounds cool."

  "How about Washington Square Park?"

  "I'll see you there in an hour."

  An hour was perfect because it gave Arthur enough time to walk. He decided to leave his iPad behind, so he wouldn't be tempted to duck into a coffee house to bang out a few words. If he had an idea, he could put it into his phone.

  The early afternoon was loud as always, but that was part of what he liked about Manhattan. A street vendor hot dog to go, along with temperatures in the high seventies and a slight breeze, made for a perfect stroll.

  Every few minutes he would pick out a new person he passed along the street and wonder what their story was. What did they do for a living? Where did they grow up? Did they have a fear of aliens?

  A woman with a bright yellow hat, who obviously grew up in Miami and didn't have a fear of anything, seemed like she might be the sort that could wield a laser pistol and shoot her way out of a tough spot.

  He had walked behind the yellow hat for a block, when she got into a limousine and kissed the silver-haired gentleman waiting for her in the backseat. Perhaps she wasn't an alien slayer?

  A grouchy man with a cell phone nearly bumped into him. Arthur was pretty sure he was an accountant who had been left by his third wife recently and who would likely be total crap in an alien bar fight.

  Arthur turned the corner and headed down 5th Avenue. It was a straight shot to the park, and there was a bookshop along the way if it looked like he might get there early.

  The n
ext person he saw was a sort of deep thinking, middle-aged man with sharp eyes. He was messing with his phone as he strolled along, presumably listening to tunes, as he wore ear buds. The worn jeans, running shoes, and bright blue tee shirt went well with his upbeat gait. Arthur guessed it was jazz he listened to.

  People were interesting, but rarely did they match Arthur's vision of who they would be in his books. It was still a good exercise, and for all he knew, his protagonist might be nibbling on a bagel or scribbling in a notebook or washing a window.

  One tiny thread of an idea and he could build a man or a woman a world to explore. What sort of world? he thought.

  That question stuck with Arthur for a few blocks. The only thing he knew for sure was he wanted there to be spaceships—a really big spaceship would be the setting for part of his story. In his current WIP, the protagonist lived on Earth, and that aspect bored Arthur a little.

  It wasn't that he didn't like what he had written. It was just that it was too familiar, too easy. Somewhere along the way Arthur had started to care about this project. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but he knew he did. That seemed like a positive.

  A couple of women came out of a sportswear shop and were heading the same direction down 5th Avenue as Arthur. They were both lookers, but the one on the right looked like a Sasha. Obviously, her family tree could be traced back to Russian royalty and the tsars. Her father might have been an admiral in the navy.

  One block later, he was sure her father had been an admiral and that she had studied in England, because her mother, a genius and world renowned scientist, had been asked to do a two-year stint at Oxford.

  The two women each carried bags from the shop and seemed to almost float down the street. He heard Sasha's friend laugh, and it was delightful. Obviously, Sasha had a good sense of humor. The light at E 36th St. changed, and Arthur caught up with the ladies.

  Sasha's friend asked her about how she liked her Aikido class. A taxi horn blew, and Arthur missed her response but assumed she said it was great and went well with the ninja assassin training she took last year.

  The light changed, everyone crossed, and then he heard her voice for the first time. She didn't have a Russian accent at all. C'est la vie.

  The two women went into a coffee shop.

  Arthur continued on his way toward the park, and the Sasha character stuck with him. He especially liked the part about her father being an admiral. Perhaps he was in charge of the big ship in his novel, or maybe it was such a big ship he was only one of the admirals. Sasha would be a scientist like her mother with undertones of ninja ass-kicking.

  The next three blocks passed under his feet without Arthur being present at all. He started to walk faster and realized there was a fighter pilot with the last name Nash, and everyone called him by his last name.

  It took another three blocks to come up with a first name. He wanted something that wasn't so, well, American, and it needed to not sound twenty-first century. The male lead would be Fristion Nash, who somehow isn't able to fly his fighter.

  The rest of the walk to the park was spent thinking of and rejecting reasons why Nash wasn't allowed to fly. It wasn't because he was being disciplined, as that bored Arthur. It had to be a series of unfortunate events or perhaps one big event. He was pretty sure his new character wasn't injured, because that was also dull enough to make Arthur groan and think of A Farewell to Arms, which led to anger.

  He put that thought out of his head and looked up. There was Barry standing next to a couple of guys playing speed chess.

  Arthur loved the sound of the pieces being slapped down and the subsequent striking of the clock. These two guys, one a young black man in his twenties, and the other an old guy who probably was Russian, were playing at a level that was beyond Arthur's meager abilities.

  He recognized that they were involved in what had likely started as a Sicilian defense, but he couldn't tell the variation. Twenty seconds later, the young guy dropped a pawn, and things unraveled quickly after that.

  Barry gave a nod to Arthur, and they walked away so as not to disturb the players.

  "I think I figured out two major characters on the walk over."

  "You walked?"

  "Yes, and I'm pretty sure the sexy scientist ninja..."

  "I'm sold, I'll take a copy in print and on Kindle," Barry said.

  Arthur laughed. "How big could somebody build a spaceship?"

  "How big is your imagination?"

  "I like that answer. Still, I'm not really up on the genre."

  "Look, the way I figure it, in Star Wars they had the death star, and if you recall, it wasn't a moon. And what about the Borg with that giant cube?"

  "I worry about the engineering."

  "You don't need to really build it."

  "Yes, but don't they need to be able to launch it into space?"

  "Why not have them build it in space, maybe have a shipyard orbiting Mars?"

  "Wow, that's a good idea. May I use that?"

  "I'd be honored if you did."

  "Okay, so this is my idea. I've got a pilot who can't fly for some reason, and a scientist who's a complete badass, and they are on this really big ship, but where is the conflict?"

  "Do you mean between the two of them, or in general?"

  "That's an excellent question."

  Chapter Thirty

  Arthur's first inclination was to procrastinate. He fought it off and downloaded the Storyist app to his iPad.

  The conversation he had had with Barry the day before had given him a lot to think about, and it also provided good building blocks for a story.

  The idea of writing a story's plot point without getting into too much detail seemed strange. Still, that's what it meant to do beats, and if it didn't work, that was okay. Arthur had prepared himself to spend one day crafting a new idea for a novel, and if it sucked he would go back to the story he had started.

  Sitting in front of the blank page was usually an awful thing, but with the new app it was different. Step one wasn't to think of a brilliant opening line, it was to start a new project.

  There were four choices: Blank, Novel, Screenplay, and Text File, so he touched Novel. He touched it again, and the label at the bottom highlighted. This was, he assumed, for the title of the book. He typed, "The Magellan Apocalypse."

  The new novel had been started.

  Opening the project he found three folders: Characters, Settings, and Images. Arthur opened the character folder, and two character sheets awaited: Protagonist and Antagonist.

  A little plus sign in the top right-hand corner let him add more story sheets. Arthur decided to add a character named Frank Block. On the sheet he wrote, "Frank Block, in accounting, lust for power, loves military rules and law, creates the Map Corps. Think Frank Burns."

  There were physical descriptions, so Arthur made Frank 52 years old with gray hair, blue eyes, and a fit build.

  The last section was called Notes. Arthur, without really expending much creative effort, wrote, "A middle-management toad, but is the highest ranking officer, Lt. Colonel, and becomes the de facto leader of the group trapped in Cargo Bay 37."

  Frank was probably going to be the antagonist, but Arthur wasn't sure yet, so he continued.

  He knew that Fristion Nash was the hero, so Arthur edited the Protagonist character sheet. He touched into the summary section and wrote, "A fighter pilot, also able to fly the long-range torpedo ships, who was ordered (much to his displeasure) to work in the Cargo fleet to help with delivering a shipment of frozen beef to Cargo Bay 37. He was the last to dock, and the beef was being unloaded when the attack began. The Bay went on lockdown, and he wasn't able to get back to his squadron SAQ-135, the Ice Devils.

  "His best friend presumably died in the battle, but he doesn't know. His motivation is to find a way back to Fighter Bay 108, which is on the other side of the ship near the aft (Approximately 70 miles as the crow flies)."

  The rest was easy. Fristion was thirty-f
our, male, brown hair, brown eyes, with an athletic build.

  In the section labeled Notes he wrote, "The third youngest lieutenant in the Flight Corps when the Magellan launched, he was 21. When the attack started, he was 24."

  It was all coming so easily. The details just poured from his fingertips without the slightest doubt about whether it was perfect or not. Each description seemed so temporary, unlike his writing, which always had a finality to it once he decided what to say. Arthur didn't believe in rewrites.

  It didn't seem like he was working on a novel. It was more akin to playing with blocks. Arthur had been a big fan of Legos in his youth, and he had just created the first block.

  An idea for what Cargo Bay 37 looked liked seemed to come out of thin air. Arthur didn't hesitate; he chose a setting sheet and went to it. The ship was huge, so the cargo bays were probably massive, he decided. Three miles long by one mile wide and ten stories high seemed about right.

  The survivors would need food, and lucky for them they had equipment for hydroponic gardening. Arthur added a massive building built from the shipping containers that held the equipment.

  A thought occurred to Arthur, Where would they get eggs? It wasn't necessary that the folks trapped in the world he was building had access to eggs, but why not give them chickens? Arthur loved eggs for breakfast and didn't want to write in an omelet-free world.

  The life in the cargo bay started to take shape. He could see the city, which was also made from shipping containers. There were narrow streets, a few shops, bars, a diner, and a huge security gate.

  In less than an hour, Arthur had crafted ten scene locations. He took a moment to reread the character sheets, and then he started to craft a summary.

  He didn't worry about too much detail; as broad strokes would do. It wasn't as much about good writing as crafting notes that he could go back to so that he could keep the story on track.

  (Arthur's Notes)

  The Magellan is a Colonist class ship that comes under attack three years into a twenty-year journey to a new solar system, where the 10 million people of the Magellan will colonize two Earth-like planets.