Simon Drake – Writer

Also see: Interview with Simon Drake on the Writing Cast>

It is time to apply the hypothesis of technological singularity to storytelling; that age old art of spinning a yarn, now perfected into template film script Hollywood blockbusters, pure genre books (i.e. Mills and Boon romance) and good old, quality, creative novels.  The Story Singularity is this: two stories, created by two different authors, and unknown to each other, are writing the one story. Does this mean both authors are using a standard base storyline, they’ve run out of ideas or/and are plagiarising a well known story? Or is that in the behemoth of entertainment, a wave and long tail of infinite supply (infinite? The Long Tail is a bit of a fable, to be discussed in another article), that there are so many stories available to the public, there are circumstances where The Story Singularity occurs. There’s a Hollywood saying, “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ.” If something makes some bucks, then someone will come out demanding their share. Sure it happens, writers do get ripped off, but sometimes there’s no plagiarism, it is what I call The Story Singularity.
The Story Singularity happened to me like this: Three weeks ago I read about the upcoming movie, 10,000 BC. I thought, wow, great setting for a story. Expect great direction by Roland Emmerich.
Like most writers I’ve studied the classic structure of film scripts, and once you know the rules, can break the rules, and incorporate structural elements into novels. After all, unless you’re on acid and your audience is on acid, there has to be intelligent design to a story, or it falls to bits. People demand quality. Good writers deliver it. Then comes the creative fluff. Where Hollywood, who can’t always be blamed, miss the point is that their audience is so large they have to flatten out the peculiarities of a story and make it a bit simple for all the simpletons out there. Big Market Share = Keep it Simple.

 
When I read the synopsis for 10,000 BC I had a cold shiver – Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy rescues girl. How original? How tried and tested? How could you not go wrong with a story like that? Yes, yes and yes. However, I was annoyed: I’d written a novel called the First Geniuses, set in the same time, about a genius boy who meets girl, invents the concept of zero, loses girl to the local witch doctor, and must rescue girl from sacrificial alter. I’d written my story in 2004, and the movie 10,000BC was to be released in the UK (where I live) on π day – 3.14 – 14th March 2008. The First Geniuses, as a novel, was hard to place with publishers and agents. It wasn’t science fiction, it wasn’t romance, it wasn’t historical (historical as a genre tends to concentrate on period pieces, the heyday of a nation or it prime time of misery, e.g. British Empire, Irish Potato Famine, rise of Nazism, obliteration of Dresden, Holocaust). Maybe my story was is a bit Clan of the Cave Bears, 1 Million BC and The Flintstones – just jokes. I’d pushed it into the bottom draw, cunningly biding my time…
Faced with The Story Singularity I had to do something, and rather than ranting in blogs about the un-originality of 10,000 BC, I decided to get my story to the market, because after the movie 10,000 BC is released, and I shop my novel The First Geniuses to publishers and agents, they could always say, “Oh this genre and story has been done” or “This genre and story is great! Let’s roll out a rip-off” at which point I’d feel like an idiot.
Now here’s where the Technological Singularity helps. Faced with The Story Singularity I had to act. I contacted the ebook publisher who had released my previous SF title Love Data and put it to him to release my novel as an eBook, slightly renaming it and cosily sliding it alongside the upcoming movie, as much as possible and as soon as possible. The traditional publishing industry is an archaic dinosaur, stumbling along like the music industry did; gaping in horror as their merry-go-round of captive audience and mega market share was shot to bits by bytes – uploading and downloading, naughty file sharing, and general digital buccaneering. Argh hargh me lads, Pirates we be, plug in thee broadband connection and pour me a rum.
So, with weeks to go, and an agreement from the publisher, I was now enforcing The Story Singularity, after all, it doesn’t exist unless the public has access or knowledge of both stories.
Now that the movies 10,000BC is out, and my eBook 10,000BC – The First Geniuses is available (as of 13th March 2008) The Story Singularity is alive.
Remember, in the Technological Singularity, something has to take over – Man or Machine.
In The Story Singularity, two (or multiple) stories sharing many elements (setting, characters, structure, turning points, untidy hair-styles etc) one story may be of a higher quality – that’s for you to decide.
But alas, one story has millions of dollars for a marketing budget to throw at advertisement on buses and in newspapers and online social networking sites, and the other has one writer, two laptops, coffee, and single malt scotch for when the sun goes down.
The Story Singularity is decided by the market, not agents, publishers and reviewers. The audience is the judge, so I have decided to be judged.