WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #32 “DRIVING [GENDER FLUID, RELATIONALLY EXPEDIENT] DAYZEE” (Submitted 4 Times Since Sept 2020, Never Revised)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver. In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

ANALOG Tag Line:
What if Humans aren’t as “primitive” as aliens THINK we are; and what if aliens aren’t as ADVANCED as we expect them to be? [After re-reading it and reading about the movie that sparked it, “Driving Miss Daisy”, the theme would be “Can aliens and Humans communicate without words – and maybe if they DID try to communicate without word, their message would come across more clearly.”]

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
Someday, Humans will come into contact with aliens. We seem to think it will be totally random and one-sided – aliens abducting Humans for experimentation – or entirely between equals; like Zefram Cochrane meeting the Vulcans. What if it’s messy and only barely standardized; yet still interstellar?

Opening Line:
The beat officer scowled as the Tesla Ten Luxury Limousine Conversion seemed to float silently past his unmarked squad car, turning down the street his daughter and granddaughter lived on.”

Onward:
Someone at the end of Carlos Bander’s block has kidnapped an alien intelligence who somehow crash-landed in the marsh at the edge of the park. The Kifush alien, going by the name of Miz Dayzee is there to find out where it went before one of the primitive Humans murders it and causes an interstellar incident.

Through endless talking, they figure out who; Carlos approaches him; he surrenders the alien. The end.

What Was I Trying To Say?
Humans may have a skill at domestication, which a particularly violent intelligence might be interested in learning. This story was sparked by the movie, “Driving Miss Daisy”, winner of numerous awards for films made in 1989. Of that inspiration, virtually nothing overt remained…though there are hints of it I can see after rereading the story and reading the synopsis of the movie.

The Rest of the Story:
Carlos, killed when Chek runs him over is resurrected and saves the life of the granddaughter of the man who’s holding the Shabe hostage – is pressed into service in order to fix things up. This is supposed to be the first of an entire series about Carlos; and I have a Triptych planned for him as well (two of the stories are already written)…

End Analysis:
I’m on page 10 and nothing has really happened – except Carlos go run over and (presumably) almost died. Otherwise, there’s NO ACTION AT ALL. It’s been “sparkling repartee” and that’s it. That and a turkey dinner will nourish your imagination.

The red ball, which is actually part of the common language of the Unity is extremely distracting. I would have to figure a way to incorporate it into the written English transcript.

Also, there was no driving, except by Chek Yeltsin…

The thing is that, I think I may have heard the voice of this story. I wrote it a year or so ago, I was trying to be “trendy”. While there’s nothing wrong with that, the title promised WAY more than it delivered. In fact, there was nothing in the story that had ANYTHING to do with “Miss” Dayzee. It was cutesy in the extreme with absolutely no meat on its bones whatsoever – and might as well have been called, “Some Stuff Happens After a Man In the Neighborhood Captures an Injured Alien and Nobody Cares”…

Can This Story Be Saved?
As is? Absolutely not, mostly because absolutely nothing happens that isn’t predictable and actually boring.

HOWEVER: Of “Driving Miss Daisy”, “Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it ‘a film of great love and patience’ and wrote, ‘It is an immensely subtle film, in which hardly any of the most important information is carried in the dialogue and in which body language, tone of voice or the look in an eye can be the most important thing in a scene. After so many movies in which shallow and violent people deny their humanity and ours, what a lesson to see a film that looks into the heart.’”

What if I reimagined this using Carlos as a bitter widower, his anger with no target, who finds an alien he recognizes as one that’s bent on using Earth. Can he get even with its people – or does he have a basic decency that makes him step back and learn to communicate with it; begin to understand it, and discover that it has a real fear of Humanity because we possess the ability to alter them for all time, making them powerless to stop anyone from taking them over? Who will be responsible? Who will save the day – if the day can be saved at all? Can anything be done to change Carlos – and to change the aliens?

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg