(Unintended) Story Research: “The Independent”

Truck carrying oversized load (SpaceX rocket). Image Source: https://cdllife.com/2018/video-trucking-spacex-rockets/

Word Count (What I’m Writing); Updated every 2-3 Days (mostly)

• Revision Month (i.e., “2nd Draft” Central)
  I have stories that I’d like to revise during this month, but I’ve not tried to do multiple projects inside of a single month before and I’m not sure that’s going to work, but I can’t think of any other way. Projects currently awaiting revision include: “Whale Song,” “The Independent” (subject of today’s blog post), “Project Skye,”
• Whale Song Revision (Fantasy Short Story) (2nd Draft)
  (Researched an article on Whaling, think that I have the two characters–a brother and a sister who are on the opposite sides of the issue.  Still, no Writing so far). Need to find a place to work in revisions–I can draft new material just fine, but I don’t seem to have any time to work on “drafting” revisions.

Currently Reading (What I’m Reading); Updated Weekly (mostly)

• For Fun:
  Transhuman edited by Mark L. Van Name and T. F. K. Weisskopf
  Just started this anthology – it was given to me at a LibertyCon some years ago, but I’ve just now gotten around to reading it. I may not finish it/read all the stories, but so far, I’ve read the first story and liked it.
  The Belgariad David Eddings
  Last week was NOT a good week, so I needed some “comfort food” for reading and my go to book for “comfort food” is the Belgariad (followed closely by Diane Duane’s So You Want To Be a Wizard.)
• For School:
  Afrofuturism (by Ytasha Womack): This book describes the academic genre of Afrofuturism (essentially African American Science Fiction that deals with social issues in culture).  I just finished Chapter 5 today and I’m at the beginning of Chapter 6 (this book has 10 chapters).
  Wrote out a fairly extensive list of possible research topics to explore from chapter 5. Really intriguing book.
• For Research/Personal Development:
  Great Aircraft of WWII by Alfred Price and Mike Spick (for Project Skye)
  Great Aircraft of WWII is a book that I’ve had in my collection for sometime–I’ve glanced at it periodically, but never read it cover-to-cover.  Now, with Project Skye, I intend to do just that.

Stumbling Upon Research for a Story

As I was watching YouTube videos over the weekend (to decompress from a fairly hard week last week), I stumbled upon a set off “trucking” videos on the site. Now, I’d actually found one earlier in July and watched it for details regarding living in a cab and the “realities” of being in such a small space for trips across country hauling freight. YouTube’s algorithms must have finally caught up with that particular viewing because it started offering other trucking videos over the weekend. One YouTuber, in particular, by the handle of indianajacktrucker caught my eye and I watched one of his videos. That one video gave quite a bit of insight into the trucking profession, covering trucking etiquette, truck stops, parking, why truckers are using their trucks instead of truck stops, food, and even a poignant moment discussing the murder of another trucker who parked in an abandoned parking lot because a “big box” store wouldn’t allow him to park on their parking lot.

The Independent = Project Independence= “Space Truckers” = Real Truckers = Story Research

So, readers of the blog over the past year have heard quite a bit about the story that I wrote entitled, “The Independent.”  It was referred to under the name Project Independence & Space Truckers on the blog. It was my attempt to “futurize” the profession of the “trucker” (i.e., what would freight hauling/haulers look like in the future)? Now, this isn’t unique–it remember games like Starflight and Elite (& and from what I hear, Elite Dangerous) were doing something similar as far back as the mid 1980s. However, I’ve not seen it done in fiction in a way that I personally like, so I wrote this story (with hopefully a larger story in mind).

2nd Draft–Focusing on Characters

I’m planning on rewriting the story and focusing more on the characters. Hopefully, now that I have all of the “events” of the story locked down in more or less the way that I want them, I’m hoping to create “Larger Than Life” characters who are at once memorable and realistic. Just by watching this one video (and I’m hopefully going to watch more next weekend when I have more time), I have quite a few ideas for the two main characters and the secondary characters, especially in regards to character traits. Now, I feel like my major task should be to try to come up with Internal Conflicts for the two main characters that they can be struggling with in regards to the story. I feel that this is where I’m weakest at the moment (more on this to come in a future blog post), but now that I’ve written the 1st draft and spent some time away from it, I can see the problems with it more objectively and hopefully work on fixing them to the best of my ability in this new 2nd draft.

Well, that’s all I have time for at the moment. Here’s hoping you have a great day!

Sidney

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