03 July 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 134,537/865,463. Today: 9,365. Average: 7,914.
Steven must deal with the pain of walking. Even though he is in good shape and walks a lot, at the end of the first day the reality of the journey must set in. Blisters on his feet. How does he care for them so that they don't become a bloody crippling mass? Sore muscles. Sore legs, sore back. What stretches does he do? Does he soak in the river? Hunger. What is his day's rations? How much water does he need to drink?
I've decided he will have a gow and a knife as weaponry. He can make arrows, so his ammunition is replenishable. It is lightweight, so he can carry it. It can be strung with gut. He needs a knife for basic functioning.
The "road" out of town is really nothing more than pasture trails up to the herds and over to the river. He is pretty much left to follow the river as closely as he can on what amounts to a game trail. He doesn't really encounter a propper road until he has crossed the river at Rannihaha's farm.
Stories:
The teacher: I think the teacher is kind of the mad scientist of the village. Steven is probably left in his/her care because everyone else has real work to do. The teacher is a person rich in lore and long on theory. Very inventive. She is the one who comes up with the idea of walking music and invents the instrument. He is also the provider of herb and animal lore. The more I think about it, the more I think the teacher might be the grandparents, both of whom are a bit crazy, but love Steven and try to prepare him for success as well as they can. They may be the only ones in the village who were actually alive when the missionary came through and actually remember what he said. Or maybe it was even before their time. Perhaps they have traveled up or down the river and are the ones equipped to give him the known geography.
The dragon's lair may be said to be in a volcano that can be seen from the village that occasionally breathes fire.
Steven must deal with the pain of walking. Even though he is in good shape and walks a lot, at the end of the first day the reality of the journey must set in. Blisters on his feet. How does he care for them so that they don't become a bloody crippling mass? Sore muscles. Sore legs, sore back. What stretches does he do? Does he soak in the river? Hunger. What is his day's rations? How much water does he need to drink?
I've decided he will have a gow and a knife as weaponry. He can make arrows, so his ammunition is replenishable. It is lightweight, so he can carry it. It can be strung with gut. He needs a knife for basic functioning.
The "road" out of town is really nothing more than pasture trails up to the herds and over to the river. He is pretty much left to follow the river as closely as he can on what amounts to a game trail. He doesn't really encounter a propper road until he has crossed the river at Rannihaha's farm.
Stories:
The teacher: I think the teacher is kind of the mad scientist of the village. Steven is probably left in his/her care because everyone else has real work to do. The teacher is a person rich in lore and long on theory. Very inventive. She is the one who comes up with the idea of walking music and invents the instrument. He is also the provider of herb and animal lore. The more I think about it, the more I think the teacher might be the grandparents, both of whom are a bit crazy, but love Steven and try to prepare him for success as well as they can. They may be the only ones in the village who were actually alive when the missionary came through and actually remember what he said. Or maybe it was even before their time. Perhaps they have traveled up or down the river and are the ones equipped to give him the known geography.
The dragon's lair may be said to be in a volcano that can be seen from the village that occasionally breathes fire.
02 July 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 125,172/874,828. Today: 12,461. Average: 7,823.
Well, I got a lot of exercise last week, but not much of it was walking. My total ending July 1 was 112,781 steps for two weeks. Standing in line all day Friday (total 2,000 steps) and Biking most of Sunday didn't help the count.
So, now the question I have about Stn. George is one of music. I have been convinced by your comments that music may be essential for a lone walker in order to keep his pace up and keep him sane. So Steven needs a musical instrument. But there is a catch. The instrument needs to meet several requirements:
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cloverdew
i feel like some version of a guitar would be perfect because, with a strap is very portable and would be easy to play while walking: think wandering minstrels. but that doesn't satisfy the one-handed rule. :(
wayzgoose
Yes. If it were a stringed instrument, it would have to be plucked and not fretted or strummed. A form of lyre might work if it could be attached to him in some way that he didn't have to hold it in one hand and play it with the other.
BTW, when I traveled cross-country on my bicycle, I carried a baritone ukelele on my pack. I discovered that you had to be very careful of the strings in the hot sun. They tightened up and broke the anchor pins right off the intstrument!
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cloister27
There's lots of things that could work except for that "not blow into it" requirement.
Taking ALL those requirements into account, all I can think of that satisfies every one is whistling and/or singing.
The lightest weight, most compact instruments are recorders and flutes. But, "play while walking" pretty well rules those out because I guarantee you you'll start feeling faint real fast trying to play something like that while walking. The breath control for the instrument and the oxygen requirements for the walking are just not compatible.
Play while walking suggests (strongly) a lute, harp, or perhaps ukulele. But those aren't especially compact and easy to transport, and then there's the whole question of string maintenance and what do you do when a string breaks?
And of course those are all two-handed.
He's just gotta be a gifted whistler. That's all there is to it. :)
wayzgoose
Whistle. Takes breath. Hard to do when under exertion. But you are right, it is difficult to come up with anything else. So, I've been trying to figure out ways to turn his clothing and/or pack into a musical instrument. Rhythms could be set by his walking pace. Then there could be handy chimes or woodblocks that added tonality. Maybe even putting a bellows in his shoes to inflate the bag of a pipe?
cloister27
> Whistle. Takes breath.
Yes, but you can whistle on both the inhale and exhale. There's a different tonal quality to it, but it does work. I can demonstrate if you need.
I'm starting to wonder, though, why is it so necessary for Stn to have music every step of the way? Why not let the _absence_ of music in particularly difficult stretches of travel underscore the physical difficulty of the trek?
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tharyn
An Ipod? ;)
wayzgoose
YES! It is a fantasy/allegory after all. Maybe it should be an iPhone so he could get his bearings via GPS! It could be a whole new concept (and one I am not adverse to trying on for size) to do an allegory where the hero is off to slay a dragon, but is coming out of West by God Virginia in 2008 and heading for New York City. There is a whole new way of looking at the allegory genre that way!
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travelintheways
Hmm... you said you didn't want just a rhythm instrument, but something like zills (finger cymbals) might work. It's a rhythm instrument, obviously, but it can produce different tones.
Or you could make up some kind of sensitive wind instrument - a hollow tube, maybe with fine strings in there somewhere? - that plays with the wind, either the natural wind or what a person makes by moving.
wayzgoose
Great ideas and very close to what I've been thinking. My first design was for multiple finger cymbals (one or two on each finger) struck by the thumb. Each cymbal would be tuned to a different pitch.
I also thought about the idea of a wind instrument that was bellowed by the hiker's movement. Think something like a bagpipe that is only inflated by the steps the hiker takes rather than by blowing into it.
I'm also considering musical clothing in which he is wearing various tonal things that can be struck or plucked as he walks. Maybe strings in a turtle shell for a lyre hung at his side, or stretched between two moving pieces of his clothing for different pitches. Great ideas. Thanks!
Well, I got a lot of exercise last week, but not much of it was walking. My total ending July 1 was 112,781 steps for two weeks. Standing in line all day Friday (total 2,000 steps) and Biking most of Sunday didn't help the count.
So, now the question I have about Stn. George is one of music. I have been convinced by your comments that music may be essential for a lone walker in order to keep his pace up and keep him sane. So Steven needs a musical instrument. But there is a catch. The instrument needs to meet several requirements:
- Must be light-weight and easy to carry
- Must be playable while walking
- Must not require Steven to blow into it as this could adversely affect his ability to walk under any strenuous conditions and still play
- Must not require both hands to play as Steven may be carrying a staff or other implement in one hand
- Must be multi-tonal, so not just a rhythm instrument with a beat (Yikes! Can you imagine walking 500 miles to a drumbeat?)
- Might be something he would dance to as well
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cloverdew
i feel like some version of a guitar would be perfect because, with a strap is very portable and would be easy to play while walking: think wandering minstrels. but that doesn't satisfy the one-handed rule. :(
wayzgoose
Yes. If it were a stringed instrument, it would have to be plucked and not fretted or strummed. A form of lyre might work if it could be attached to him in some way that he didn't have to hold it in one hand and play it with the other.
BTW, when I traveled cross-country on my bicycle, I carried a baritone ukelele on my pack. I discovered that you had to be very careful of the strings in the hot sun. They tightened up and broke the anchor pins right off the intstrument!
---------------------------------------
cloister27
There's lots of things that could work except for that "not blow into it" requirement.
Taking ALL those requirements into account, all I can think of that satisfies every one is whistling and/or singing.
The lightest weight, most compact instruments are recorders and flutes. But, "play while walking" pretty well rules those out because I guarantee you you'll start feeling faint real fast trying to play something like that while walking. The breath control for the instrument and the oxygen requirements for the walking are just not compatible.
Play while walking suggests (strongly) a lute, harp, or perhaps ukulele. But those aren't especially compact and easy to transport, and then there's the whole question of string maintenance and what do you do when a string breaks?
And of course those are all two-handed.
He's just gotta be a gifted whistler. That's all there is to it. :)
wayzgoose
Whistle. Takes breath. Hard to do when under exertion. But you are right, it is difficult to come up with anything else. So, I've been trying to figure out ways to turn his clothing and/or pack into a musical instrument. Rhythms could be set by his walking pace. Then there could be handy chimes or woodblocks that added tonality. Maybe even putting a bellows in his shoes to inflate the bag of a pipe?
cloister27
> Whistle. Takes breath.
Yes, but you can whistle on both the inhale and exhale. There's a different tonal quality to it, but it does work. I can demonstrate if you need.
I'm starting to wonder, though, why is it so necessary for Stn to have music every step of the way? Why not let the _absence_ of music in particularly difficult stretches of travel underscore the physical difficulty of the trek?
-------------------------------------------------
tharyn
An Ipod? ;)
wayzgoose
YES! It is a fantasy/allegory after all. Maybe it should be an iPhone so he could get his bearings via GPS! It could be a whole new concept (and one I am not adverse to trying on for size) to do an allegory where the hero is off to slay a dragon, but is coming out of West by God Virginia in 2008 and heading for New York City. There is a whole new way of looking at the allegory genre that way!
-------------------------------------------------
travelintheways
Hmm... you said you didn't want just a rhythm instrument, but something like zills (finger cymbals) might work. It's a rhythm instrument, obviously, but it can produce different tones.
Or you could make up some kind of sensitive wind instrument - a hollow tube, maybe with fine strings in there somewhere? - that plays with the wind, either the natural wind or what a person makes by moving.
wayzgoose
Great ideas and very close to what I've been thinking. My first design was for multiple finger cymbals (one or two on each finger) struck by the thumb. Each cymbal would be tuned to a different pitch.
I also thought about the idea of a wind instrument that was bellowed by the hiker's movement. Think something like a bagpipe that is only inflated by the steps the hiker takes rather than by blowing into it.
I'm also considering musical clothing in which he is wearing various tonal things that can be struck or plucked as he walks. Maybe strings in a turtle shell for a lyre hung at his side, or stretched between two moving pieces of his clothing for different pitches. Great ideas. Thanks!
28 June 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 100,041/899,959. Today: 10,120. Average: 8,337.
The teacher. I thought at first that the teacher would be all about math, physics, and history; but I'm thinking the instruction medium is music. I think this because Stn needs something to occupy himself on the road, and to help him with his pace. He should have uphill songs, downhill songs, evening and morning songs, and perhaps songs for other occasions that will help him on his journey. The songs should be instructional, containing the math, physics, and history that he will need as he travels.
This brings us to the point of an instrument for Stn. He should have something besides his voice. I think. But what kind of instrument? If he has to blow it, that cuts down his pace because it takes air. He's not likely to do it under any strenuous effort. Strings are nice, but take two hands. A drum would be all right, but perhaps monotonous.
So, maybe I need to invent an instrument that can be played with just the fingers of one hand, while holding it in the same hand. some pentatonic instrument. Hmmm. The description of that could be interesting.
The teacher. I thought at first that the teacher would be all about math, physics, and history; but I'm thinking the instruction medium is music. I think this because Stn needs something to occupy himself on the road, and to help him with his pace. He should have uphill songs, downhill songs, evening and morning songs, and perhaps songs for other occasions that will help him on his journey. The songs should be instructional, containing the math, physics, and history that he will need as he travels.
This brings us to the point of an instrument for Stn. He should have something besides his voice. I think. But what kind of instrument? If he has to blow it, that cuts down his pace because it takes air. He's not likely to do it under any strenuous effort. Strings are nice, but take two hands. A drum would be all right, but perhaps monotonous.
So, maybe I need to invent an instrument that can be played with just the fingers of one hand, while holding it in the same hand. some pentatonic instrument. Hmmm. The description of that could be interesting.
27 June 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 89,921/910,079. Today: 6,497. Average: 8,175
Mayor/Elder is manipulating things. He uses the whole idea of raising a dragon-slayer to unite the village in a common cause as a way to divert their attention away from real issues at home. Not enough food? It's the dragon's fault. Plague? The dragon's fault. Lost sheep? The dragon took it. If we could just get rid of the dragon, our problems would be solved.
Mother is a single mom. There may be several aspects about that. She may be hiding the elder's rape under some threat. The declaration may be that the dragon-slayer will be a man without a father. When Stn asks who his father is she answers only that he is the child of the Sun (and moon?). He says other children have fathers, she answers that he is not like other children. Everything is programmed to make stn feel different and set apart.
Mayor/Elder is manipulating things. He uses the whole idea of raising a dragon-slayer to unite the village in a common cause as a way to divert their attention away from real issues at home. Not enough food? It's the dragon's fault. Plague? The dragon's fault. Lost sheep? The dragon took it. If we could just get rid of the dragon, our problems would be solved.
Mother is a single mom. There may be several aspects about that. She may be hiding the elder's rape under some threat. The declaration may be that the dragon-slayer will be a man without a father. When Stn asks who his father is she answers only that he is the child of the Sun (and moon?). He says other children have fathers, she answers that he is not like other children. Everything is programmed to make stn feel different and set apart.
26 June 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 83,424/916,576. Today: 6,129. Average: 8,342
I need to determine the weight of Stn's pack and a weight for everything that goes in it. Then I'll hold a poll on LJ and ask people what stays in and what goes. I'll cut off what he takes when the weight limit is reached. Then we'll take another crack at evaluating the items he is taking with a poll asking what you would leave behind in order to take something else and to justify it.
I need to determine the weight of Stn's pack and a weight for everything that goes in it. Then I'll hold a poll on LJ and ask people what stays in and what goes. I'll cut off what he takes when the weight limit is reached. Then we'll take another crack at evaluating the items he is taking with a poll asking what you would leave behind in order to take something else and to justify it.
21 June 2007
Steps to the dragon: 38,455/961,545. Today: 12,188. Average: 7,691.
Good walking day. I've done a lot of thinking about the story and am about ready to write my first take on the mother.
This evening I went to a workshop on pitching your novel. I've been working on putting the pitch together for Security & Exchange. It is harder than writing the book. I did not make the finalist list for the literary competition, but will probably do a full rev of the book before the conference on July 24 when I'll get to pitch to two lit agents. It will be a great learning experience if nothing else.
Good walking day. I've done a lot of thinking about the story and am about ready to write my first take on the mother.
This evening I went to a workshop on pitching your novel. I've been working on putting the pitch together for Security & Exchange. It is harder than writing the book. I did not make the finalist list for the literary competition, but will probably do a full rev of the book before the conference on July 24 when I'll get to pitch to two lit agents. It will be a great learning experience if nothing else.
20 June 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 26,267/973,733. Today: 9,501
I'm considering writing out significantly detailed outlines of each traveler's story before November so that the actual writing is only slightly more than transcribing the story. Sort of like doing an interview, then writing the story from the notes.
I'm considering doing this all longhand so that I can spend time really crafting the sequence, tone, and phrasing of the story. For example, the opening words should carry the fact that "the longest journey begins with a single step" so that Steven starts counting from his doorstep. The first paragraph should set the theme and direction for the whole book. It should be clear that no matter who is telling the story, the book is about Steven.
Within two paragraphs we should have established that Steven walks with a measured step at a specific pace. To walk slower would be to drag his feet and appear reluctant. Faster would appear reckless and lack seriousness. It would also prevent the townspeople from having the opportunity to appreciate his departure.
It should also introduce the fact that the journey began long before Steven's birth when a traveler spun a tale for the gullible villagers about a dragon that lived for a thousand years and would descend upon villages to devour their young or their livestock. Every sensible village would be prepared to train up a dragon-slayer. The village would know when the time was right by some sign.
Then we transition to the ______'s Tale. What is he called? Is he a wizard? Is he a minstrel? Does he tell the story out of malevalence, as ajoke on the bumpkins, or as a real evangelist? Perhaps he is an evangelist or a missionary. Perhaps the dragon is a promised punishment for those who do not believe his story. Perhaps the whole reason the village decides to train a dragon-slayer is because they have decided to run the missionary out of town, but fear the consequences.
What does the term "dragon" mean? A dragon could refer to a ythical beast, to a ruler, to a punishment, to a person. A dragon-lady could be a powerful or sexual woman. A lizard. Dragon-breath would be so foul it burns. Others?
Is there a sollusion that is going on? Was a sheep killed by a wolf and themayor uses it to bolster his campaign saying that surely the dragon must have done it--we need to unite in this time of national crisis and send out the dragon-slayer?
Have people alsays lived in fear of the dragon--kids, be good or the dragon will eat you--and now they have decided to break the chains of fear and send out the dragon-slayer. Perhaps they have always left a sacrifice for the dragon and now they are in open revolt and want to break the bonds of fear.
Someplace along the line in the first chapter, Steven needs to ponder whether he was fated to be the dragon-slayer, was elected, volunteered, was drafted, or what. Do we resolve how he was determined to be the dragon-slayer? Does he have reasons to doubt that he is really the dragon-slayer? What if I'm not the right one?
So, in summary,--Interupted. Don't remember the summary.
From Richard: About Faith/Belief. Adler talks about courage (heart). Can be transferred. If I believe in you, it gives you faith in yourself.
I'm considering writing out significantly detailed outlines of each traveler's story before November so that the actual writing is only slightly more than transcribing the story. Sort of like doing an interview, then writing the story from the notes.
I'm considering doing this all longhand so that I can spend time really crafting the sequence, tone, and phrasing of the story. For example, the opening words should carry the fact that "the longest journey begins with a single step" so that Steven starts counting from his doorstep. The first paragraph should set the theme and direction for the whole book. It should be clear that no matter who is telling the story, the book is about Steven.
Within two paragraphs we should have established that Steven walks with a measured step at a specific pace. To walk slower would be to drag his feet and appear reluctant. Faster would appear reckless and lack seriousness. It would also prevent the townspeople from having the opportunity to appreciate his departure.
It should also introduce the fact that the journey began long before Steven's birth when a traveler spun a tale for the gullible villagers about a dragon that lived for a thousand years and would descend upon villages to devour their young or their livestock. Every sensible village would be prepared to train up a dragon-slayer. The village would know when the time was right by some sign.
Then we transition to the ______'s Tale. What is he called? Is he a wizard? Is he a minstrel? Does he tell the story out of malevalence, as ajoke on the bumpkins, or as a real evangelist? Perhaps he is an evangelist or a missionary. Perhaps the dragon is a promised punishment for those who do not believe his story. Perhaps the whole reason the village decides to train a dragon-slayer is because they have decided to run the missionary out of town, but fear the consequences.
What does the term "dragon" mean? A dragon could refer to a ythical beast, to a ruler, to a punishment, to a person. A dragon-lady could be a powerful or sexual woman. A lizard. Dragon-breath would be so foul it burns. Others?
Is there a sollusion that is going on? Was a sheep killed by a wolf and themayor uses it to bolster his campaign saying that surely the dragon must have done it--we need to unite in this time of national crisis and send out the dragon-slayer?
Have people alsays lived in fear of the dragon--kids, be good or the dragon will eat you--and now they have decided to break the chains of fear and send out the dragon-slayer. Perhaps they have always left a sacrifice for the dragon and now they are in open revolt and want to break the bonds of fear.
Someplace along the line in the first chapter, Steven needs to ponder whether he was fated to be the dragon-slayer, was elected, volunteered, was drafted, or what. Do we resolve how he was determined to be the dragon-slayer? Does he have reasons to doubt that he is really the dragon-slayer? What if I'm not the right one?
So, in summary,--Interupted. Don't remember the summary.
From Richard: About Faith/Belief. Adler talks about courage (heart). Can be transferred. If I believe in you, it gives you faith in yourself.
19 June 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 16,766/983,234. Today: 5,293
Terrain: Steven passes through a variety of terrain, including forest, mountain, desert, and urban. His instinct is to go around rather than through. This is one of the things that make his journey so arduous and long. He comes to a lake, he goes around it. A desert--he goes around it. Mountain? He has to determine if he really has to go over it. The key element is that he avoids conflict and the very things that would harden him for battle. That is also the path his companions have chosen, so when his path steadily becomes more difficult, they continue on their easier paths, making it inevitable that when it comes to the really hard parts, he is alone.
This will also bring him back closer to home than he has traveled. If he had taken the more difficult route, he would have gotten ther in fewer footsteps, though it might not have taken less time. Certainly if he visits his village again, he will find the village much closer than he imagined.
The dragon: If the dragon is able to manifest himself in different forms, he might be one or more of the traveling companions. He might also be the loremaster who originally incites the village into drafting a dragon-slayer.
The travelers: I'm thinking there is an element of the Canterbury Tales in all this. As Steven meets the various travelers, each has a story to tell. This makes it possible also to meet people who don't join him for the trip, but who have a story to tell--like Ranihaha: "Bridges are a great hindrance to commerce." The story is told by someone he encounters, not by someone who travels with him.
Terrain: Steven passes through a variety of terrain, including forest, mountain, desert, and urban. His instinct is to go around rather than through. This is one of the things that make his journey so arduous and long. He comes to a lake, he goes around it. A desert--he goes around it. Mountain? He has to determine if he really has to go over it. The key element is that he avoids conflict and the very things that would harden him for battle. That is also the path his companions have chosen, so when his path steadily becomes more difficult, they continue on their easier paths, making it inevitable that when it comes to the really hard parts, he is alone.
This will also bring him back closer to home than he has traveled. If he had taken the more difficult route, he would have gotten ther in fewer footsteps, though it might not have taken less time. Certainly if he visits his village again, he will find the village much closer than he imagined.
The dragon: If the dragon is able to manifest himself in different forms, he might be one or more of the traveling companions. He might also be the loremaster who originally incites the village into drafting a dragon-slayer.
The travelers: I'm thinking there is an element of the Canterbury Tales in all this. As Steven meets the various travelers, each has a story to tell. This makes it possible also to meet people who don't join him for the trip, but who have a story to tell--like Ranihaha: "Bridges are a great hindrance to commerce." The story is told by someone he encounters, not by someone who travels with him.
17 June 2007
Steps to the Dragon: 5,700/994,300. Today: 5,700
Bought a pedometer that counts my footsteps. In measurement tests, my step is just under 32". So my walking today of 5,700 steps is just under three miles. My estimates say that Steven George will have to travel 1,000,000 steps to get from the village to the dragon (about 500 miles) I'm planning to see if I can get there before he does. It's going to be a summer of heavy walking. I'm thinking that as I progress and get the list closer to what I think it will be, I'm going to try walking with a pack of approximately the weight that Steven will start out carrying. I'd like to see how that affects his stride and ability to travel. It should be very interesting.
quitereasonable:
I think that beating Steven George on his run is a great idea.
If you come to a point where you really need to slow George down, a thick rainforest is a great idea, esp. if you have it rain during the journey. A rain during a journey can flood the area and in an attempt to esp the torrent, it can really throw you off course. The coming of the new river sounds just like cars driving overhead. A 3 mile point-to-point hike that I went on in Panama with a hiking expert and a bunch of other healthy high school students took us eight hours.
xjenavivex:
Thanks for telling us about the pedometer. I love when you dig in.
cloister27:
Ok, I have to loan you my brother-in-law's book. Yes, he was running instead of walking, and yes, most days he could get to a town to sleep in, but just the same I guarantee you'll get a lot of insight into Steven's journey from reading at least some of it. I'll try to remember to bring it in tomorrow.
Bought a pedometer that counts my footsteps. In measurement tests, my step is just under 32". So my walking today of 5,700 steps is just under three miles. My estimates say that Steven George will have to travel 1,000,000 steps to get from the village to the dragon (about 500 miles) I'm planning to see if I can get there before he does. It's going to be a summer of heavy walking. I'm thinking that as I progress and get the list closer to what I think it will be, I'm going to try walking with a pack of approximately the weight that Steven will start out carrying. I'd like to see how that affects his stride and ability to travel. It should be very interesting.
quitereasonable:
I think that beating Steven George on his run is a great idea.
If you come to a point where you really need to slow George down, a thick rainforest is a great idea, esp. if you have it rain during the journey. A rain during a journey can flood the area and in an attempt to esp the torrent, it can really throw you off course. The coming of the new river sounds just like cars driving overhead. A 3 mile point-to-point hike that I went on in Panama with a hiking expert and a bunch of other healthy high school students took us eight hours.
xjenavivex:
Thanks for telling us about the pedometer. I love when you dig in.
cloister27:
Ok, I have to loan you my brother-in-law's book. Yes, he was running instead of walking, and yes, most days he could get to a town to sleep in, but just the same I guarantee you'll get a lot of insight into Steven's journey from reading at least some of it. I'll try to remember to bring it in tomorrow.
16 June 2007
Some more questions about Stn. George
For some period (Steven is ageless in my mind) he has lived in an isolated village with a dragon mythology. No one in the village has ever actually seen a dragon. No one in the village actually knows how to kill one. But the entire village feels it is incumbent upon them to train up their dragon-slayer and to give him what he needs for his task. I anticipate stories of encounters with his mother, his lover, his teacher, his priest, and his mayor/elder.
I really love hearing your responses, and although I'm likely to change many of them to suit the story as it develops, I add all suggestions to my log of writing ammunition. Thanks in advance for helping out.
andersenmom
In response to question 2:
They have a dragon mythology: presumably they have some sort of lore of what is effective against a dragon (whether true or false). I'd go into that: a weapon from the blacksmith, a charm from a "hedgewizard" or even from his lover - certainly a memento from the lover, whether effective or not.
Hope that helps a little.
wayzgoose
Thank you! I don't know yet what it will be, but this has definitely gone into my list of possibilities. Appreciate you taking the time to respond. If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
travelintheways
I've caught a couple of your posts about your story idea here, but I have to admit I don't remember much. So I hope this helps!
I don't know if this fits into your story, but... what about someone who *claims* to have seen/fought a dragon? He or she doesn't have to be telling the truth (I don't remember the exact premise of your story), but I think it might make a neat episode if he ran into someone who has claimed to have seen/fought dragons, and he's probably gonna be skeptical. I dunno, I just like borderline crazy characters.
1. Depending on his experiences in the village, it might be memorable for him to run into someone/someones who have some significantly different customs from his village folk. Also memorable is someone who would treat him badly OR very well (again, depending on his worldview).
2. I know this is probably obvious, but I think items representative of a person's personality and relationship to Steven are best. So a protective relation (father, mother, uncle, whatever) could give him a protective charm or piece of clothing, while a younger, rash sort of friend might give him a fearsome-looking spear. Someone more sentimental might give him a memento, so he can remember home when he's far away from home and feeling lonely. A learned person might give him a potion or whatever from ancient lore, probably very complicated.
3. Eek, I'm not as good on this stuff. It's sorta cliche, but if he has any sort of skill that could earn him money/food/board on the way, it would be VERY helpful for him. The most common example of this is music, obviously - a little flute or whatever could maybe earn him a few free nights at an inn. Or something at least that he likes to do in his free time - a small illustrated book or scroll he can read in the evenings, a musical instrument (again), a needle-and-thread if he can mend his own clothes, a... I don't know, one of those cup and ball things. Or a packet of spices if he's a decent cook. Stuff like food and water is obvious, and I don't know what the best stuff for long-term travel is.
wayzgoose
Thank you! I like the idea of encountering an extreme person in his travels. Perhaps someone who takes advantage of him and "steals" the one thing he thinks will be most valuable in his fight against the dragon. Good suggestion.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond. If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
travelintheways
Glad to help! Brainstorming ideas is good fun. I'm about to friend you!
cloister27
> No one in the village has ever actually seen a dragon. No one in the village actually knows how to kill one. But the entire village feels it is incumbent upon them to train up their dragon-slayer and to give him what he needs for his task.
Ah, dogma. :) But a nice aspect to the story none the less, and a jumping-off point for including some type of parable message in the story if you're into that sort of thing, along the lines of being skeptical of dogma or always validating your data or what-have-you.
Also, I like travelintheways' suggestion of Steven getting bad advice from an itinerant blowhard. Someone who is charismatic and persuasive, and the second he learns that the village is training a dragon slayer, starts making shit up in order to curry free food, lodgings, and feminine favor from the villagers.
Thinking about these comments and about some earlier posts, I'm inclined to agree that Steven's girlfriend (P.S.: I somehow see Steven as still a virgin. Probably because that echoes his general greenhorn status with respect to dragons and all) would give him some sort of keepsake. If, during the climactic battle, you find the dragon needing Steven to kill him while Steven is for some reason reluctant to do so (perhaps he's already started to wonder whether his mission is right), then the dragon could goad him into doing it by catching sight of the keepsake and making a threat towards the girlfriend ("after I finish you off and fly to your village, she's the first one I'm going to eat!").
The other commenters pretty much said what I'd have said for #1 and #2, but with respect to his skills, I think Steven should leave the village confidently, with skills that he thinks he'll need, but which will turn out to be entirely inadequate to the reality of his situations. Have him go through some rough times while he adjusts to life on the road but is still close enough that the idea of going back to the village tempts him.
wayzgoose
I like the idea that the itinerant could come in two parts: first that there is someone who comes to the village (which has never really heard of dragons before) and tells them about the grave danger and how to go about preparing for it (i.e. train up a dragon-slayer). Second, that Steven meets someone along the road who "knows all about dragons," but in reality is making everything up. It has a good ring to it.
I think also that Steven is not "inexperienced." He has great depth of experience--as in is not a teenager plucked at random and thrust into a situation for which he has not been prepared--but his experience is in a very closed environment (his village). His village knows all about life, love, and happiness. It just doesn't know about the outside world.
dracolich_prgrm
For the other points, much the other people's opinion.. for supplies, some sort of bedroll, whether be a sleeping bag type blanket, something to protect him from the ground, some dried foods such as jerky, some bandages and probably a small sewing kit for mending any tears in his clothing. Rope and thread. Clothing appropriate for the journey, armour or a weapon, sturdy shoes, and various other odds and ends.
wayzgoose
Thank you! It's interesting that you mention food. I'm thinking that Steven may set out thinking that rations for a weeklong camp-out may be all he needs. He doesn't really know how far it is to the dragon. Then he's on the trail having to find food as well as make his way--which means he needs hunting (and fishing and gathering) skill in order to survive.
If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
ewrites
(Hi. I'm from the nanowrimo community.)
I don't know anything about your story, so use whatever you think's useful:
1. His friends. Is there anyone in the village who had doubts about dragons (whether they exist, whether they can be killed)? If Steven gets frustrated on the tough journey he might start to wonder whether it's pointless. Have people gone out to kill dragons before? Did they come back? Or do they remember the people who left and never returned?
3. An extra pair of boots and lots of socks. :)
wayzgoose
Thank you! I love the idea of having a skeptic in there somewhere. I was originally thinking that this might come in if Steven gets to a city on his journey. In the city they don't believe in dragons. Or perhaps "The Dragon" is a local pub.
If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
cloister27
Also, and this is a little thing but it keeps nagging at me so I'll mention it: every time I go to type his name in one of these comments, I want to type it as "Stephen". It somehow just feels off to use the more modern v-spelling of that name in the context of a pre-industrial setting with dragons. At least, this is what my head tells me; I don't actually know from any research or whatnot that Stephen is a more historic spelling than Steven, but there you go. Food for thought.
wayzgoose
That's definitely an open issue. I focused so much on the abbreviation Stn. that I didn't give a whole lot of thought to how the rest of the name was spelled. I'll give some thought and research to this. I actually thought that he might even be nick-named Sten after the Stn abbreviation.
alathewish:
(Also from the nanowrimo community)
I actually don't have much to contribute, but I think this is a fantastic idea and I'd be really interested to find how it turns out.
So this is just a banner of encouragement being waved. I'll try think of something more helpful later.
Yours Alla
wayzgoose:
Thank you for the interest and for stopping by. I'd love for you to participate as the story progresses. I expect to ask many more questions. I don't post all of them on "nanowrimo so please feel free to friend me at if you'd like to follow along.
For some period (Steven is ageless in my mind) he has lived in an isolated village with a dragon mythology. No one in the village has ever actually seen a dragon. No one in the village actually knows how to kill one. But the entire village feels it is incumbent upon them to train up their dragon-slayer and to give him what he needs for his task. I anticipate stories of encounters with his mother, his lover, his teacher, his priest, and his mayor/elder.
- Are there other significant people that he should remember encounters with either while leaving the village or after he is out on the open road? Who are they and what is their significance?
- Everyone wants to give Steven something to help him on his journey and with his battle with the dragon. What are some of the things (and from whom) that he is given for his journey?
- Steven is undertaking a journey of about 500 miles on foot to find and slay a dragon. What does he actually need to take? Does he have it with him when he leaves the village or does he acquire it on the road?
I really love hearing your responses, and although I'm likely to change many of them to suit the story as it develops, I add all suggestions to my log of writing ammunition. Thanks in advance for helping out.
andersenmom
In response to question 2:
They have a dragon mythology: presumably they have some sort of lore of what is effective against a dragon (whether true or false). I'd go into that: a weapon from the blacksmith, a charm from a "hedgewizard" or even from his lover - certainly a memento from the lover, whether effective or not.
Hope that helps a little.
wayzgoose
Thank you! I don't know yet what it will be, but this has definitely gone into my list of possibilities. Appreciate you taking the time to respond. If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
travelintheways
I've caught a couple of your posts about your story idea here, but I have to admit I don't remember much. So I hope this helps!
I don't know if this fits into your story, but... what about someone who *claims* to have seen/fought a dragon? He or she doesn't have to be telling the truth (I don't remember the exact premise of your story), but I think it might make a neat episode if he ran into someone who has claimed to have seen/fought dragons, and he's probably gonna be skeptical. I dunno, I just like borderline crazy characters.
1. Depending on his experiences in the village, it might be memorable for him to run into someone/someones who have some significantly different customs from his village folk. Also memorable is someone who would treat him badly OR very well (again, depending on his worldview).
2. I know this is probably obvious, but I think items representative of a person's personality and relationship to Steven are best. So a protective relation (father, mother, uncle, whatever) could give him a protective charm or piece of clothing, while a younger, rash sort of friend might give him a fearsome-looking spear. Someone more sentimental might give him a memento, so he can remember home when he's far away from home and feeling lonely. A learned person might give him a potion or whatever from ancient lore, probably very complicated.
3. Eek, I'm not as good on this stuff. It's sorta cliche, but if he has any sort of skill that could earn him money/food/board on the way, it would be VERY helpful for him. The most common example of this is music, obviously - a little flute or whatever could maybe earn him a few free nights at an inn. Or something at least that he likes to do in his free time - a small illustrated book or scroll he can read in the evenings, a musical instrument (again), a needle-and-thread if he can mend his own clothes, a... I don't know, one of those cup and ball things. Or a packet of spices if he's a decent cook. Stuff like food and water is obvious, and I don't know what the best stuff for long-term travel is.
wayzgoose
Thank you! I like the idea of encountering an extreme person in his travels. Perhaps someone who takes advantage of him and "steals" the one thing he thinks will be most valuable in his fight against the dragon. Good suggestion.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond. If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
travelintheways
Glad to help! Brainstorming ideas is good fun. I'm about to friend you!
cloister27
> No one in the village has ever actually seen a dragon. No one in the village actually knows how to kill one. But the entire village feels it is incumbent upon them to train up their dragon-slayer and to give him what he needs for his task.
Ah, dogma. :) But a nice aspect to the story none the less, and a jumping-off point for including some type of parable message in the story if you're into that sort of thing, along the lines of being skeptical of dogma or always validating your data or what-have-you.
Also, I like travelintheways' suggestion of Steven getting bad advice from an itinerant blowhard. Someone who is charismatic and persuasive, and the second he learns that the village is training a dragon slayer, starts making shit up in order to curry free food, lodgings, and feminine favor from the villagers.
Thinking about these comments and about some earlier posts, I'm inclined to agree that Steven's girlfriend (P.S.: I somehow see Steven as still a virgin. Probably because that echoes his general greenhorn status with respect to dragons and all) would give him some sort of keepsake. If, during the climactic battle, you find the dragon needing Steven to kill him while Steven is for some reason reluctant to do so (perhaps he's already started to wonder whether his mission is right), then the dragon could goad him into doing it by catching sight of the keepsake and making a threat towards the girlfriend ("after I finish you off and fly to your village, she's the first one I'm going to eat!").
The other commenters pretty much said what I'd have said for #1 and #2, but with respect to his skills, I think Steven should leave the village confidently, with skills that he thinks he'll need, but which will turn out to be entirely inadequate to the reality of his situations. Have him go through some rough times while he adjusts to life on the road but is still close enough that the idea of going back to the village tempts him.
wayzgoose
I like the idea that the itinerant could come in two parts: first that there is someone who comes to the village (which has never really heard of dragons before) and tells them about the grave danger and how to go about preparing for it (i.e. train up a dragon-slayer). Second, that Steven meets someone along the road who "knows all about dragons," but in reality is making everything up. It has a good ring to it.
I think also that Steven is not "inexperienced." He has great depth of experience--as in is not a teenager plucked at random and thrust into a situation for which he has not been prepared--but his experience is in a very closed environment (his village). His village knows all about life, love, and happiness. It just doesn't know about the outside world.
dracolich_prgrm
For the other points, much the other people's opinion.. for supplies, some sort of bedroll, whether be a sleeping bag type blanket, something to protect him from the ground, some dried foods such as jerky, some bandages and probably a small sewing kit for mending any tears in his clothing. Rope and thread. Clothing appropriate for the journey, armour or a weapon, sturdy shoes, and various other odds and ends.
wayzgoose
Thank you! It's interesting that you mention food. I'm thinking that Steven may set out thinking that rations for a weeklong camp-out may be all he needs. He doesn't really know how far it is to the dragon. Then he's on the trail having to find food as well as make his way--which means he needs hunting (and fishing and gathering) skill in order to survive.
If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
ewrites
(Hi. I'm from the nanowrimo community.)
I don't know anything about your story, so use whatever you think's useful:
1. His friends. Is there anyone in the village who had doubts about dragons (whether they exist, whether they can be killed)? If Steven gets frustrated on the tough journey he might start to wonder whether it's pointless. Have people gone out to kill dragons before? Did they come back? Or do they remember the people who left and never returned?
3. An extra pair of boots and lots of socks. :)
wayzgoose
Thank you! I love the idea of having a skeptic in there somewhere. I was originally thinking that this might come in if Steven gets to a city on his journey. In the city they don't believe in dragons. Or perhaps "The Dragon" is a local pub.
If you'd like to keep participating, I don't always post the questions on the nanowrimo community, but my HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/profile"HYPERLINK "http://wayzgoose.livejournal.com/"wayzgoose journal is open.
cloister27
Also, and this is a little thing but it keeps nagging at me so I'll mention it: every time I go to type his name in one of these comments, I want to type it as "Stephen". It somehow just feels off to use the more modern v-spelling of that name in the context of a pre-industrial setting with dragons. At least, this is what my head tells me; I don't actually know from any research or whatnot that Stephen is a more historic spelling than Steven, but there you go. Food for thought.
wayzgoose
That's definitely an open issue. I focused so much on the abbreviation Stn. that I didn't give a whole lot of thought to how the rest of the name was spelled. I'll give some thought and research to this. I actually thought that he might even be nick-named Sten after the Stn abbreviation.
alathewish:
(Also from the nanowrimo community)
I actually don't have much to contribute, but I think this is a fantastic idea and I'd be really interested to find how it turns out.
So this is just a banner of encouragement being waved. I'll try think of something more helpful later.
Yours Alla
wayzgoose:
Thank you for the interest and for stopping by. I'd love for you to participate as the story progresses. I expect to ask many more questions. I don't post all of them on "nanowrimo so please feel free to friend me at
13 June 2007
Thinking about the journey on the road and the terrain:
It should be varied terrain. Uphil/flat, lush, forest, desert.
It seems odd that there should be a vast, long road with no habitation or other landmark on it. They must come to another village or to a city somewhere along the line. If it were a big place (city), then when he tells people that he is going to slay the dragon, there would be a very different reaction (laughter) than there is in his village.
I can see him telling the people of another village that he is the dragon-slayer and being told that they had a dragon-slayer once. He never came back.
I might take a look at a slice of an area that I know as a start/end of the journey. I have to decide how far it is reasonable to have him walk on this journey.
Assuming that he travels an average of three miles an hour over ten hours each day, that would be thirty miles. It would be less going through rough terrain than on a smooth flat surface. Maybe he should only average 2 miles per hour, or 20 mile per day.
What is a reasonable, arduous journey? Three months? Six months? Five years?
Remember it is an allegory, not a dice-roll fantasy game. No fantastical creatures other than the dragon. No fairies, no dwarves, etc.
quitereasonable:
I like the idea of an arduous and momentous journey being nine months, but that could be because I'm pregnant.
An average of 20-30 miles seems reasonable, but shouldn't there be stuff happening to him to delay him?
I don't really have suggestions on the terrain, but were I writing it I might bone up on travel writings like Bryson's "Walk in the Woods", but for various areas, to see what I might like to throw at my unsuspecting victim, uh, protaganist.
cloister27
> It should be varied terrain. Uphil/flat, lush, forest, desert.
Agreed. You'll need descriptional (if I may coin a word) ways to indicate the passage of time and distance without constantly resorting to "and then on day 37..."
If it's a trade road it could easily a) exist, b) be uninhabited for vast stretches. Your setting (village) implies a long bygone era, when basically all settlements existed on rivers, sizeable streams, or shorelines. Setting the Dragon's lair in a mountain cave where the ridge of the mountain divides the space between two drainage systems, then there could easily be hundreds of miles of uninhabited trade road going, say, from a major town on one side to a major town on the other side.
To me, a "reasonable, arduous journey" for an epic type story would have to be one year, which also allows you to go through all four seasons during the journey. Seems like the sort of thing that legendary stories tend to do. On the other hand, that's pretty long, particularly if this dragon is supposed to be an essentially local figure to the village; i.e. he's _this_ village's problem. Other villages have their own damn dragons to deal with. In that case, I'd go with 28 days: maybe he has to start and end the journey on a full moon for some reason of prophesy or other.
20 miles a day, while certainly possible, is HARD going. For example: in 1988 my brother in law, who is not nearly as insane as you might suspect, RAN from Cape Henlopen, DE, to Point Reyes, CA, along the American Discovery Trail. Distance: 4800 miles. Time: 236 days. Average speed: 20.33 miles per day. And he was running. 3 mi/hr for 10 hr/day may sound good on paper, but it neglects time for finding food, pitching and un-making camp, etc. For Steven to consistently make 10 miles would probably be hard enough.
Terrain: something that mirrors his emotional/psychological journey. In the beginning, the going should be easy and smooth, and the land hospitable with plenty of streams to get water at and obligingly suicidal rabbits for him to catch, etc. But the farther he goes, the harder it should get until the final few miles to the dragon's lair are totally hellish (over craggy mountains in the dead of winter or something).
If the journey itself is hard enough, then it would be reasonable for Steven to arrive in some state of delirium, where from lack of food, water, and sleep he's not all together in his right mind. That would give you an interesting segue into his conversations with the dragon, and would make all the more believable any suppositions by Steven that the dragon's voice isn't real.
xjenevivex:
I loved the way the historian covered this terrain. it may be more modern than your story needs, but it came through fabulously.
It should be varied terrain. Uphil/flat, lush, forest, desert.
It seems odd that there should be a vast, long road with no habitation or other landmark on it. They must come to another village or to a city somewhere along the line. If it were a big place (city), then when he tells people that he is going to slay the dragon, there would be a very different reaction (laughter) than there is in his village.
I can see him telling the people of another village that he is the dragon-slayer and being told that they had a dragon-slayer once. He never came back.
I might take a look at a slice of an area that I know as a start/end of the journey. I have to decide how far it is reasonable to have him walk on this journey.
Assuming that he travels an average of three miles an hour over ten hours each day, that would be thirty miles. It would be less going through rough terrain than on a smooth flat surface. Maybe he should only average 2 miles per hour, or 20 mile per day.
What is a reasonable, arduous journey? Three months? Six months? Five years?
Remember it is an allegory, not a dice-roll fantasy game. No fantastical creatures other than the dragon. No fairies, no dwarves, etc.
quitereasonable:
I like the idea of an arduous and momentous journey being nine months, but that could be because I'm pregnant.
An average of 20-30 miles seems reasonable, but shouldn't there be stuff happening to him to delay him?
I don't really have suggestions on the terrain, but were I writing it I might bone up on travel writings like Bryson's "Walk in the Woods", but for various areas, to see what I might like to throw at my unsuspecting victim, uh, protaganist.
cloister27
> It should be varied terrain. Uphil/flat, lush, forest, desert.
Agreed. You'll need descriptional (if I may coin a word) ways to indicate the passage of time and distance without constantly resorting to "and then on day 37..."
If it's a trade road it could easily a) exist, b) be uninhabited for vast stretches. Your setting (village) implies a long bygone era, when basically all settlements existed on rivers, sizeable streams, or shorelines. Setting the Dragon's lair in a mountain cave where the ridge of the mountain divides the space between two drainage systems, then there could easily be hundreds of miles of uninhabited trade road going, say, from a major town on one side to a major town on the other side.
To me, a "reasonable, arduous journey" for an epic type story would have to be one year, which also allows you to go through all four seasons during the journey. Seems like the sort of thing that legendary stories tend to do. On the other hand, that's pretty long, particularly if this dragon is supposed to be an essentially local figure to the village; i.e. he's _this_ village's problem. Other villages have their own damn dragons to deal with. In that case, I'd go with 28 days: maybe he has to start and end the journey on a full moon for some reason of prophesy or other.
20 miles a day, while certainly possible, is HARD going. For example: in 1988 my brother in law, who is not nearly as insane as you might suspect, RAN from Cape Henlopen, DE, to Point Reyes, CA, along the American Discovery Trail. Distance: 4800 miles. Time: 236 days. Average speed: 20.33 miles per day. And he was running. 3 mi/hr for 10 hr/day may sound good on paper, but it neglects time for finding food, pitching and un-making camp, etc. For Steven to consistently make 10 miles would probably be hard enough.
Terrain: something that mirrors his emotional/psychological journey. In the beginning, the going should be easy and smooth, and the land hospitable with plenty of streams to get water at and obligingly suicidal rabbits for him to catch, etc. But the farther he goes, the harder it should get until the final few miles to the dragon's lair are totally hellish (over craggy mountains in the dead of winter or something).
If the journey itself is hard enough, then it would be reasonable for Steven to arrive in some state of delirium, where from lack of food, water, and sleep he's not all together in his right mind. That would give you an interesting segue into his conversations with the dragon, and would make all the more believable any suppositions by Steven that the dragon's voice isn't real.
xjenevivex:
I loved the way the historian covered this terrain. it may be more modern than your story needs, but it came through fabulously.
12 June 2007
Jason suggests that if Stn is OCD about counting his footsteps, what kind of turmoil is he tossed into when he inevitably loses track? Does he need to start over? Does he need to re-trace to the place where he was when he lost track? Does he need to reconcile himself to starting the count from where he is now? Does he give up the count?
11 June 2007
Why does Steven tan the hide of the dragon?
I think that in the dying conversation the dragon actually instructs Steven on tanning his hide and preserving his meat (it's already smoked!)
That leads me to believe that the dragon might keep talking to him after it is dead.
The influences and the travelers are almost parallel.
Mother-Tinker = Responsibility to home
Lover - gypsy = Responsibility to love
Teacher -
Priest - Pilgrim = Responsibility to god/spirit
Mayor - Soldier = Responsibility to homeland/society
Are they also spiritual/ physical/emotional/mental?
I think that in the dying conversation the dragon actually instructs Steven on tanning his hide and preserving his meat (it's already smoked!)
That leads me to believe that the dragon might keep talking to him after it is dead.
The influences and the travelers are almost parallel.
Mother-Tinker = Responsibility to home
Lover - gypsy = Responsibility to love
Teacher -
Priest - Pilgrim = Responsibility to god/spirit
Mayor - Soldier = Responsibility to homeland/society
Are they also spiritual/ physical/emotional/mental?
09 June 2007
Notes on Stn George
Is the dragon his father and the next dragon-slayer his son? Seems a little cliche. I'm your father Luke. Oedipean.
Richard suggests that it is about making the transitions. What do you do after you have achieved your goals?
Steven should be ageless. The experience of an older man, but the naivete of a youth. Rich experience within a limited framework. His experience is of his townor village. No one there really knows much of the world. So when he meets strangers on the road he doesn't know about Tinkers and Pilgrims, Gypsies soldiers. The dragon is able to tempt him with things he has never seen. Aside from it being so hard to write, it would be good if he was sexless. Anyone should be able to identify with him.
There should be a fairly even division in the influences that he encounters in terms of sex.
Mother, Lover, Teacher, Gypsy
Priest, Mayor, Tinker, Soldier, Pilgrim
Also in and out of village.
Walking
Stately & Dignified = 80 steps/minute
Hiking long distance= 100 steps/minute
Liesurely or dragging = 60 steps/minute
Rushing = 140 steps/minute
Step length is 30" (2.5 feet)
Feet in a mile = 5280 (inches =63360)
Steps in a mile = 2112 (symetrical)
Speed in town = 26.4 minutes per mile or 2.3 miles/hour
Speed on the road = 21.1 min/mile or 2.9 mi/hr
Speed at a rush = 15 min/mile or 4 mi/hr.
Is the dragon his father and the next dragon-slayer his son? Seems a little cliche. I'm your father Luke. Oedipean.
Richard suggests that it is about making the transitions. What do you do after you have achieved your goals?
Steven should be ageless. The experience of an older man, but the naivete of a youth. Rich experience within a limited framework. His experience is of his townor village. No one there really knows much of the world. So when he meets strangers on the road he doesn't know about Tinkers and Pilgrims, Gypsies soldiers. The dragon is able to tempt him with things he has never seen. Aside from it being so hard to write, it would be good if he was sexless. Anyone should be able to identify with him.
There should be a fairly even division in the influences that he encounters in terms of sex.
Mother, Lover, Teacher, Gypsy
Priest, Mayor, Tinker, Soldier, Pilgrim
Also in and out of village.
Walking
Stately & Dignified = 80 steps/minute
Hiking long distance= 100 steps/minute
Liesurely or dragging = 60 steps/minute
Rushing = 140 steps/minute
Step length is 30" (2.5 feet)
Feet in a mile = 5280 (inches =63360)
Steps in a mile = 2112 (symetrical)
Speed in town = 26.4 minutes per mile or 2.3 miles/hour
Speed on the road = 21.1 min/mile or 2.9 mi/hr
Speed at a rush = 15 min/mile or 4 mi/hr.
08 June 2007
I have decided to scale back my novel ambitions for November and deal with something that doesn't feel like three years research and an insane month. So instead of the Letters from the Revolution, I am thinking in terms of an allegory called St. George and the Dragon, in which St stands for Steven, not Saint. Here is the synopsis as it currently stands.
Steven George has always known that he is the one who would slay the dragon. He doesn't remember if he volunteered, was drafted, elected, or inherited the task. He has spent his life being respected and cared for by the people of his village because of what he would one day do.
The story opens on the day that Steven is leaving the village to find the dragon. As he leaves, he reviews the five significant people in his live who have prepared him for this day--Mother, Lover, Teacher, Priest, and Mayor/Elder.
After he leaves the village, Steven meets four people, each of whom he first suspects of being the dragon, revealing that he really doesn't know what the dragon is. The fellow-travelers are Tinker, Gypsy, Pilgrim, and Soldier. They travel together giving him advice and swearing they will back him up until they reach the signpost. Then each of the four friends follow their own roads and leave Steven to follow the sign pointing to the dragon.
Steven finds the dragon and carries on a dialogue with it in which the dragon tries first to scare him away, then to bargain, then to tempt Steven. Each of these efforts fail and at last, Steven rises to fight the dragon.
During the battle, each of the opponents land heavy blows, some physical and some psychological. Steven refers to the dragon as a dumb beast, the dragon to Steven as an ignorant bumpkin. At last, Steven deals a fatal blow to the dragon whose agony washes over Steven so that he understands at last that he has killed an intelligent and valuable creature.
In the aftermath of the battle, Steven, through the dragon, discovers that the dragon was a part of him and gave him purpose which he has now lost. After the dragon is dead, Steven stays at the dragon's lair and rebuilds, ultimately wearing the dragon's skin to keep him warm. As time passes, he becomes the dragon and upon going down from his lair to the village where he had grown up, he finds a child being raised to become the dragon slayer.
I have a rough storyline and enough knowledge of what the story will be to start asking a ton of questions. So I'll keep this updated with the progress as I head toward November.
Okay, just the first few questions on my mind. There will be more. (Many, many more!)
From Jason:
> Then each of the four friends follow their own roads and leave Steven to follow the sign pointing to the dragon.
This had better be a long enough journey that a) it's a meaningful commitment for them to say they'll go that far with him, but b) Steven can't really blame them for not going the whole way when they bail out.
It just occurred to me that the reason Steven would preserve the hide right after the battle would be because at that moment he still _expected_ to go back to the village, and needed proof. But the village being a long ways away and all, he figured he'd better preserve the hide before setting out. After all, it would be a shame if it rotted along the way, and besides, who wants to carry a big smelly uncured hide for that long? I would imagine, too, that before the remorse sets in that Steven would probably indulge in some fantasies about the hide hanging up in the big palace that the villagers would surely build for him, or maybe as a big floor covering in front of his throne.
Regardless (and on a related subject), IMHO there just has to be a psychological component to him finally putting on the dragon skin. I mean, how can there _not_ be a psych aspect to wearing the skin of your enemy. He's got to do it for some reason that's not so, well, mundaine as "Brr, sure is chilly today. Guess I'll wear this old dragon skin I've got lying around..."
Steven George has always known that he is the one who would slay the dragon. He doesn't remember if he volunteered, was drafted, elected, or inherited the task. He has spent his life being respected and cared for by the people of his village because of what he would one day do.
The story opens on the day that Steven is leaving the village to find the dragon. As he leaves, he reviews the five significant people in his live who have prepared him for this day--Mother, Lover, Teacher, Priest, and Mayor/Elder.
After he leaves the village, Steven meets four people, each of whom he first suspects of being the dragon, revealing that he really doesn't know what the dragon is. The fellow-travelers are Tinker, Gypsy, Pilgrim, and Soldier. They travel together giving him advice and swearing they will back him up until they reach the signpost. Then each of the four friends follow their own roads and leave Steven to follow the sign pointing to the dragon.
Steven finds the dragon and carries on a dialogue with it in which the dragon tries first to scare him away, then to bargain, then to tempt Steven. Each of these efforts fail and at last, Steven rises to fight the dragon.
During the battle, each of the opponents land heavy blows, some physical and some psychological. Steven refers to the dragon as a dumb beast, the dragon to Steven as an ignorant bumpkin. At last, Steven deals a fatal blow to the dragon whose agony washes over Steven so that he understands at last that he has killed an intelligent and valuable creature.
In the aftermath of the battle, Steven, through the dragon, discovers that the dragon was a part of him and gave him purpose which he has now lost. After the dragon is dead, Steven stays at the dragon's lair and rebuilds, ultimately wearing the dragon's skin to keep him warm. As time passes, he becomes the dragon and upon going down from his lair to the village where he had grown up, he finds a child being raised to become the dragon slayer.
I have a rough storyline and enough knowledge of what the story will be to start asking a ton of questions. So I'll keep this updated with the progress as I head toward November.
- When Steven George first actually sees the dragon, why doesn't he go straight to work killing it instead of sitting down to engage in dialogue?
- Is the dragon really Steven's father (father-image)?
- Does Steven attempt to go back to the village after the dragon is dead and tell them that the dragon wasn't bad after all?
Okay, just the first few questions on my mind. There will be more. (Many, many more!)
From Jason:
> Then each of the four friends follow their own roads and leave Steven to follow the sign pointing to the dragon.
This had better be a long enough journey that a) it's a meaningful commitment for them to say they'll go that far with him, but b) Steven can't really blame them for not going the whole way when they bail out.
- The dragon starts the conversation by saying something so surprising or profound that Steven is convinced to wait a while and learn more before fighting.
- No. Too cliche. Cue sound of Darth Vader breathing.
- I don't think so. If I were Steven, I'd feel completely betrayed by anyone in the village who ever contributed to his feeling that he had to do this thing--which, as you make it sound, is everybody. I wouldn't want anything to do with them. At a loss for what to do next, I'd probably stay at the lair since the now-dead dragon is the being I'd feel the most empathy with, but I'd be telling myself that this was just until I figured out what to do with the rest of my life. But of course, I'd get habituated to it and the more I stayed there the more I'd empathize with this dragon I'd slain. It could get to be an obsession, with me first affecting the dragon's speech patterns, then maybe some of his physical mannerisms, then only finally putting on the dragon's skin (maybe I'd preserved the hide immediately after the battle before the remorse had set in) as a culmination of this process by which I'd psychologically transformed into the dragon. Something about the skin would cause it to fuse with me, turning me physically into the dragon as well. But no, I don't think I'd go back to the village. Not until after I was dragonized.
It just occurred to me that the reason Steven would preserve the hide right after the battle would be because at that moment he still _expected_ to go back to the village, and needed proof. But the village being a long ways away and all, he figured he'd better preserve the hide before setting out. After all, it would be a shame if it rotted along the way, and besides, who wants to carry a big smelly uncured hide for that long? I would imagine, too, that before the remorse sets in that Steven would probably indulge in some fantasies about the hide hanging up in the big palace that the villagers would surely build for him, or maybe as a big floor covering in front of his throne.
Regardless (and on a related subject), IMHO there just has to be a psychological component to him finally putting on the dragon skin. I mean, how can there _not_ be a psych aspect to wearing the skin of your enemy. He's got to do it for some reason that's not so, well, mundaine as "Brr, sure is chilly today. Guess I'll wear this old dragon skin I've got lying around..."
06 March 2007
I'm thinking more and more that I should have either a narrator who tells the story, filling in the blanks, or that the stories should use a typographic "dissolve" from the letters (perhaps in Italic) and the story that connects them.
I could use this conceit to interrupt a letter so that it opens the scene, but instead of relating everything as part of a very long letter, we switch to a narrative account. It would otherwise stretch the believability if each letter were a dozen pages in length. Or I could tell the story between letters, so that each letter was of a reasonable length and complete, but between letters the narration carries on.
In either case, I need to be careful not to lose the charm and continuity of letting the letters themselves tell the story, or at least reveal the story's underlying meaning.
If I use a narration, what is the Point of View? M. suggests that I re-read Cold Mountain to help with that, and I might. But as I see it, I have several alternatives.
Thomas Dowding Born to a wealthy family in New England in 1745. Educated at Harvard which he left at age 17 to go to England and study at the Inns of Court. On the ship on his return to America he meets and falls in love with Ellen Garrick. They are married soon after they arrive back in Connecticut and he takes her to live in Western Connecticut. They have two children while Thomas practices law. He is brought to the attention of the soon-to-be representative to the First Continental Congress and is gradually brought into the fold of the Sons of Liberty.
Ellen Garrick Born in 1751 in Devon. She comes to America with her father who is to take some sort of government position in Connecticut arranged by his brother or brother-in-law who is influential in the British Colonial government. Ellen is a country girl at heart and loves the idea of rural living in America. She despises the cesspool of Philadelphia and won't go to live there with Thomas. She starts out as the daughter of a British functionary, progresses to join her husband's patriotism, then under the influence of her uncle passes Thomas's letters on to the British. When Thomas ceases writing and is presumed dead, she flees with her uncle and father and the children to Canada.
As I see this overall, the big danger would be to let the history become too important. I need to know where my characters intersect with history, but not to confuse the novel with a history lesson. I should be able to extract the story from this time and place it in WWII, Bagdad, or some future place and still have roughly the same story with the same letters. It is ultimately about a family divided by distance and political allegiance. That story is timeless.
I could use this conceit to interrupt a letter so that it opens the scene, but instead of relating everything as part of a very long letter, we switch to a narrative account. It would otherwise stretch the believability if each letter were a dozen pages in length. Or I could tell the story between letters, so that each letter was of a reasonable length and complete, but between letters the narration carries on.
In either case, I need to be careful not to lose the charm and continuity of letting the letters themselves tell the story, or at least reveal the story's underlying meaning.
If I use a narration, what is the Point of View? M. suggests that I re-read Cold Mountain to help with that, and I might. But as I see it, I have several alternatives.
- A descendent is compiling a family history and tells the stories.
- One of the characters is the narrator telling about it from her POV while poring over the letters.
- Narration is fully 3rd person neutral, covering all POVs. This has the greatest likelihood of success but also the biggest risk of sounding like a history book.
- A peripheral character of the time tells the story, like the representative.
- Alternates to #1 include a near descendent, like Thomas's son, or a descendent in 1959 at the unveiling of the statue to the Unknown Soldier, or a contemporary narrator.
- It could also be a person in charge of the memorial or in charge of exhuming a body form the mass burial field for the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Character Sketches:
Thomas Dowding Born to a wealthy family in New England in 1745. Educated at Harvard which he left at age 17 to go to England and study at the Inns of Court. On the ship on his return to America he meets and falls in love with Ellen Garrick. They are married soon after they arrive back in Connecticut and he takes her to live in Western Connecticut. They have two children while Thomas practices law. He is brought to the attention of the soon-to-be representative to the First Continental Congress and is gradually brought into the fold of the Sons of Liberty.
Ellen Garrick Born in 1751 in Devon. She comes to America with her father who is to take some sort of government position in Connecticut arranged by his brother or brother-in-law who is influential in the British Colonial government. Ellen is a country girl at heart and loves the idea of rural living in America. She despises the cesspool of Philadelphia and won't go to live there with Thomas. She starts out as the daughter of a British functionary, progresses to join her husband's patriotism, then under the influence of her uncle passes Thomas's letters on to the British. When Thomas ceases writing and is presumed dead, she flees with her uncle and father and the children to Canada.
As I see this overall, the big danger would be to let the history become too important. I need to know where my characters intersect with history, but not to confuse the novel with a history lesson. I should be able to extract the story from this time and place it in WWII, Bagdad, or some future place and still have roughly the same story with the same letters. It is ultimately about a family divided by distance and political allegiance. That story is timeless.
23 February 2007
The crux of Thomas's choice will come down to the fact that his wife is a Torie and has been passing his missives on to her uncle. He has been feeding them to the British who thwart the Americans at every turn.
When Thomas discovers what has happened, he writes a final letter with misinformation in it and tells his wife that he, too, will be riding to war at long last because it is his duty to his country. He does, and survives the battle, but never again writes to his wife. When the dead are collected and Thomas never returns home, Ellen assumes he has been lost in battle.
In truth, he leaves the field victorious and he and Jane move to the western territories where he continues his life as a lawyer with Jane and a new name she has given him. In the rugged wilds of West Virginia, he and Jane make the kind of life for themselves that he dreamed of having with Ellen. Years later he is elected to congress as a representative from West Virginia.
His last letter is to Jane, describing what a close call he has had as President Adms thought he recognized him from years ago. Thomas has followed the love of his life and his country, rather than betray it to his tratorous wife.
In her final letter to her uncle, Ellen praises Thomas stating that it may well be his bones that lie in the tomb of the unknown soldier. She says that it is better this way than that he ever discovered her treachery against him and his country. She writes from Canada where she has fled to raise her children as goood citizens of the Crown.
Notes:
When Thomas discovers what has happened, he writes a final letter with misinformation in it and tells his wife that he, too, will be riding to war at long last because it is his duty to his country. He does, and survives the battle, but never again writes to his wife. When the dead are collected and Thomas never returns home, Ellen assumes he has been lost in battle.
In truth, he leaves the field victorious and he and Jane move to the western territories where he continues his life as a lawyer with Jane and a new name she has given him. In the rugged wilds of West Virginia, he and Jane make the kind of life for themselves that he dreamed of having with Ellen. Years later he is elected to congress as a representative from West Virginia.
His last letter is to Jane, describing what a close call he has had as President Adms thought he recognized him from years ago. Thomas has followed the love of his life and his country, rather than betray it to his tratorous wife.
In her final letter to her uncle, Ellen praises Thomas stating that it may well be his bones that lie in the tomb of the unknown soldier. She says that it is better this way than that he ever discovered her treachery against him and his country. She writes from Canada where she has fled to raise her children as goood citizens of the Crown.
Notes:
- I need to study letters of the period for style, headings, and so on.
- I need a good chronology of the American Revolution with a description of the battles that went well and those that failed.
- I need a good clean way of identifying the letters and a persona for the editor/compiler of these letters (descendent).
- I need a list of the major pieces of correspondence with the dates and parties involved.
- Thomas to Ellen
- Ellen to Thomas
- Ellen to her uncle
- Ellen's uncle to her
- Jane to her cousin
- Josiah Bartlet to his wife
- It may not work to use Josiah Bartlet as he is the namesake of the president on West Wing. He may as a result be too well known. Check other signers of the declaration for an equally obscure representative.
- I'm not sure I like Jane to be a servant or serving girl, but I can't think of another place where there would be opportunity for commerce between them and the assumption that she is deaf.
- There is a possibility of using a few lines of actual letters of the approximate dates between the fictional narratives. Jane's letter might be her journal instead of letters to a cousin.
- Is there a tomb of the unknown soldier for the Revolutionary War? If so, where is it?
22 February 2007
An Epistolary Novel by Nathan W. Everett
Synopsis
This is a new storyline that I am working on as a possible entry in NaNoWriMo in November of 2007. We'll see if it holds together as the time approaches.
Thomas Dowding is a devoted husband, patriot, and legal mastermind. He is the dependable and depended-upon assistant to Josiah Bartlet, Delegate to the Continental Congress from the colony of New Hampshire. As such, Thomas spends long periods of time in Philadelphia, away from his beloved wife, Ellen, and two children William and Mary, hoping to bring a declaration of freedom to the American people. During these absences, Thomas writes lengthy love letters to his beloved, chronicling, as well, his endeavors on behalf of the honorable men of the Congress.
Through Thomas and Ellen’s letters to each other, we see emerge a portrait of life in colonial America and the struggle for freedom. They have sacrificed their home life for the dream of an independent nation.
But Thomas is a conflicted man. In truth, he doubts the motives of those passionately arguing for independence. He doubts that the colonies will win the war with their mother England. “What child,” he asks, “ever wins a battle with its mother? We are disciplined to obey and honor her. And should the child succeed, what then should we think of it but that it has ill-treated its family?” Thomas doubts the faith in which he was raised, and even his love for his wife from whom he is so long absent.. He is, as he once jestingly suggests, a true Doubting Thomas.
But these things are never written to his wife. Thomas becomes acquainted with a servant, or serving girl, Jane, whom, through a mixture of circumstances, he assumes is deaf. She, for reasons of her own, declines to disabuse him of this notion. Operating under the assumption that she cannot hear what he is saying, he begins to unburden his soul to Jane. The Thomas that emerges through the letters of Jane to her cousin, Diane, in Maryland is a portrait of a frightened and soulful man with whom she falls hopelessly in love.
Through the letters of these three, and occasional missives from peripheral characters, the story congeals at the point when Thomas must show by action where his loyalties lie and what he really believe in. In one climactic event, related by each of the three principals, he must choose between wife and servant, England and America, heaven and hell. In that choice may lie the success or failure of The American Revolution.
21 October 2006
- Wednesday, November 15: Sleeping with the enemy
- Waking to a dream
Dag wakes up Wednesday morning consciously feeling a warm body pressed against his in the bed. He takes inventory of his surroundings and discovers that Margaret is pressed up against him. He is in her apartment. - Getting the story
Dag discovers that he has been in her bed basically since the dowsing in the river on Monday. He tries to get going, but she convinces him to stay. She confesses her part in the scheme to get his computer, but that the thugs who rule the waterfront promised her he wouldn’t be hurt. He finds out she pulled him out of the river and got him to her apartment and has nursed him through the fever of the past day. - Getting the girl
Dag asks if they had done anything, alluding to sex, and she tells him that he’s been in no condition for that, but that she hasn’t given up hope. He tells her that she doesn’t owe him for betraying him to the thugs, and she’s repaid her treachery by nursing him back to health. She tells him that she doesn’t pay debts with sex, but that she does know when a treasure drops in her lap, so to speak. They take all day making love and Dag falls asleep in her arms.
- Waking to a dream
- Thursday, November 16: Snowjob
- Alone again
Dag awakes this time to find that he is alone. His clothes have been laundered and there is a note from Margaret. She tells him that the door will lock automatically when he leaves and says simply, Thank you. - Catching up with reality
Realizing that he has gone three days without communication, Dag heads for a cellular store and immediately calls Riley. She is beside herself and tells him to call Silas immediately. Dag finds out that she sent Silas after him when his GPS went in the river. She is furious that Dag hasn’t called. He explains and asks her to get him a ticket home. - In the airport
Dag picks up a new computer and GPS transmitter on his way to the airport and catches the flight to Seattle with a connection in Minneapolis. When he is waiting for his connection he sees Angel get off a plane and head for the train. He follows her to the Mall of America and watches her shop all afternoon. - Catching up to Simon
Dag follow Angel to the charter terminal and there encounters Simon. Simon says he knew Dag would find him, but Dag is finding it harder and harder to concentrate. He realizes he is falling and asks Simon for help.
- Alone again
- Friday, November 17: Charter
- In-flight movies
Dag is aware that they have become airborne and wonders where they are en-route to. Eventually Angel comes to tell him that they’ve been re-routed and will land in Atlanta instead of Jamaica. She has booked rooms for them at a hotel and as soon as the weather breaks they’ll continue the trip. She says that Simon (flying the plane) has told her that he has depended on Dag finding him since he started this adventure. - The philanthropist thief
At the hotel, Simon tells Dag all about his crimes (embezzling funds from the partnership with Bradley) but that it was after he discovered that Bradley was using the operation to launder money from drug deals with Smiesen. So, finally Simon had skimmed off an entire month’s profits from the drug dealer and fled and was determined to give it all to charity and to go to a remote location to live the rest of his life with Angel. Dag asks why he didn’t go to authorities and Simon says that it would be tantamount to a jail sentence for him since he wasn’t innocent of all financial mis-handling. Then he wants to know if Dag has his computer. - Collaboration proposition
Simon proposes that Dag help him give away the funds (all except a small amount for him to live on) and disappear. Dag agrees to give Simon a decision the next day. He talks about where he would give money away if it were his and what he would do with it.
- In-flight movies
- Saturday, November 17: To Die or Not to Die
- Not in a hotel room
Dag wakes up in pain so intense he can’t call for help. He swears he will not die in a hotel room in Atlanta. He talks about it not being clean and how bad it would be for business for the hotel.
- Not in a hotel room
- Sunday, November 19: I made my first mortgage payment when I was 26, and my last one two months later
- The child bride
Dag tells the story of how he married Brenda and then she ran off with his best friend Simon. We discover the long history between them of wanting to change the world. They had even talked about stealing drug money to do good. Dag knows and understands that he is going to join Simon’s scheme.
- The child bride
- Sunday, November 12: All That Jazz
- Babysitting Maizie
Dag considers taking her with him, but discards the notion all together and drops her off with Mrs. Prior. Mrs. Prior talks about how worried Maizie gets if Dag doesn’t call her and talk each day. She wants to be with him. - Jet travel
Dag boards the plane to Chicago and thinks he sees a familiar face, but it takes a while to realize it was the person with the laptop earlier that week. He settles into his seat and sleeps all the way to Chicago. - Calling home
After checking in at the Blackstone, Dag makes calls to Riley (waking her up and telling her where he is) and to Silas. Riley is furious that Dag left without telling her, but he tells her just to monitor him on his GPS. He’ll keep it active for her. Silas is concerned that Dag is going in without backup and tells him he could be there in 24 hours. Dag pooh-poohs the idea and insists that he’ll be fine. Then he calls Maizie and puts her mind at ease. - Out on the Town
Dag goes to the Palmer House for a steak (even though he knows it is bad for him). Then he finds the jazz club Bradley recommended and settles in. It happens to be the type of club that starts out slow, but as things pick up, people just start dancing. Then a young woman sits down at his table. She apologizes and talks about needing to sit for a while and there being no other tables. She comes alone because at this club you don’t need to be with someone to have a good time. They make arrangements to meet for dinner Monday night. - Musing about Margaret
After their conversation, Dag returns to the Blackstone and muses about sitting with the young woman and what it meant to him. He talks about enjoying the company of women and how it makes him feel. Etc.
- Babysitting Maizie
- Monday, November 13: Wet Welcome in the Windy City
- Dag elects the direct approach
After looking up the information on the import/export company that he is going to visit, Dag cases the scene. He is a little disconcerted by the roughness of the Chicago waterfront along the river. Thinks again about calling Silas for backup, then goes in. - Talking to Smiesen
Dag thinks he’s seen the same person on the plane again, but dismisses the idea. His conversation with Smiesen is under the guise of being a representative for Simon and he pushes for information on the books. He is stonewalled, but when he gets out his computer, it seems to be of major interest. - Putting clues together and tearing them apart again
Nothing seems to be going right for Dag. He overhears Smiesen talk about a shipment coming in tonight. Dag figures that he’ll hang around and wait. He keeps coming around to the clues that he had and how they don’t add up as Simon’s kind of business deal. Dag spends the rest of the afternoon gathering data on Smiesen’s business. - Dag goes for dinner
Dag picks up Margaret in a taxi for dinner and they head out to another quiet jazz café that she recommends. They have a good time talking and listening to the music. Then Dag drives her home in a taxi and they go for a walk along the waterfront. Dag is surprised she lives so close to the river. - In the drink
As they are walking along, they are mugged. Two men grab Dag’s laptop case and then in the struggle, they push him into the river. He hears Margaret scream and another splash. He muses that the cold of the river should have given him a heart attack, but he’d probably drown first. The last thing he remembers is a hand catching his arm and pulling him upward.
- Dag elects the direct approach
- Tuesday, November 14: My midlife crisis hit the day I realized 33 was half-way through my life expectancy.
- The Mustang and the Girl
Dag talks about his party days. We discover that he was terribly afraid of his own mortality. He realizes that in his current condition, he may well have overestimated his life expectancy. He explains, also, his realization of how age plays a part in relationships and how there always seemed to be an ulterior motive when a young woman and an older man get together. - The Girl in the Bed
Dag has waking dreams of being snuggled next to a woman and believes that he is once again next to the girl in the Mustang. He allows himself to wallow in those dreams, eating what was fed to him and understanding that he is not fully conscious.
- The Mustang and the Girl
19 October 2006
What a great service you all are providing for those of us stumbling around in detective mysteries resulting in legal battles. Thank you. I believe I have questions for various of your specialties.
1. Disabilities. If a person with an extremely well-trained dog discovered they had a medical condition (heart failure) that required possible calls for aid, regular medication, etc., how difficult would it be to get said dog certified as a helper dog?
2. Estate disposition. If said person dies intestate and has no immediate family, how far is a search made for relatives before the estate is liquidated, and once liquidated, what happens to it?
3. Estate disposition. If said person dies with a will leaving a blanket statement of "all worldly possessions to go to X", will that person have any difficulty in simply taking over the deceased's estate? Should there be an executor named? If they were in business and he is leaving the business to her could she keep it active while the will is being settled? Would any other person (like an ex-wife) be able to make any claims against the estate?
4. Search warrants. If there is reason to suspect a cyber-crime has been committed, let's say embezzlement, can the authorities (police? FB I? FINCen?) get a search warrant for the contents of a computer? If in the act of searching for evidence of said crime, they find evidence of a different crime (say child porn) can they bring additional charges based on that discovery even though they had no reason to suspect that crime when the original warrant was issued?
Thanks to all of you and any who respond to these questions. I hope I haven't gotten myself into plot-hell with setting up these situations!
friendof:
(Disabilities) This is the only one I know a little something about (took a class on it in law school... hopefully I am remembering correctly).
Fortunatly for your story, it's really whatever you want. Not only is each state different, each city can be different if the state is silent on the issue (and I believe most are). A condo association that tries to keep the person from moving in or a store that seeks to block the dog from coming in can't stop a service animal (doesn't even have to be a dog) under the ADA . So what makes an animal a "service" animal? At least one court has said that the city ordinances can require "training" but can't require what form of training and can't require certification. Either way, it's a fairly new area of law... so I say go with whatever you want for your story. (If you want huge conflict over the issue, make the dog a pit bull in a city that's banned pit bulls!) :)
BLAH BLAH LEGAL DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVISE THIS IS JUST SOME GENERAL KNOWLEDGE BLAH BLAH.
wayzgoose:
Thank you. I'll check to see if there are any local ordinances in Seattle. Funny you should mention pit bulls. Maizie, in my story, is a cross between a pit bull and a dachsund. (Don't ask.)
friendof:
Honestly, I would be shocked to hear that Seattle doesn't have an ordinance involving pits and, sadly, pit mixes. If you want the dog to be able to get into places, you may need to change breeds (or have the vet write that it's a "dachsund mix" with no one any the wiser...). The second you mention pit bull, the city's interest in protecting citizens is likely going to outweigh any ADA requirements for reasonable accomodation. Some cities (like Miami) have banned pits completly and that's in people's private homes... allowing a pit bull service animal (even a mix) is even more of a risk to the public. Just something to keep in mind........
saraswati:
I am going to have to respectfully disagree with the previous poster (friendof) who gave info on service animals. This is my area of legal practice, so I might have a little bit more specifc info that may be helpful for you.
Yes, there are specific laws that vary from state to state (I can give you CA law specifically if you need it, but I don't have info on any other state), but the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and case law does explicitly define what a service animal is, and what it must do to qualify as a service animal. So there is actually a very clear answer to your question.
(what friendof may be referring to is that there are no set limits right now on what kind of animals can be considered service animals. People have claimed monkeys and snakes and things like that are service animals, and sometimes it sticks. Also, there is still some vaugeness in what "tasks" a service animal performs for someone who is claiming a mental illness as a disability. But for physical disabilities, the law is pretty clear. )
To be considered a "service animal", the animal must be trained to perform a specific task that relates to the disability. However, here is some more info. Not all medical conditions are "disabilities". In order to be a disability under the ADA, the medical condition must severely limit a daily activity, such as seeing, hearing, moving, walking, showering, etc. So first of all, your character's heart condition must be severe enough that it affects their daily life and keeps them from performing basic life tasks. If the heart condition is so severe that they can't get around without a walker or wheelchair, or that they are prone to severe dizzy spells, fainting, or can't drive. Then it might be a disability. Usually disabilities under the ADA are mobility based (paralysis, wheelchair, cane), sensory-based (blind, deaf), general auto-immune based (HIV, Lupus), nervous system failures, or mental illnesses.
Bottom line, if the heart condition leaves them frail enough to qualify under the ADA, they are going to have some severe limitations in their daily life.
Now under CA law, you don't need to be quite so ill, but that's CA law.
Second, any animals that you want to qualify as service animals must be trained to do specific tasks that alleviate the disability in question. So, for example, seeing eye dogs do tasks assisting with blindness. And hearing dogs alert their owners to sounds (like a doorbell or phone or siren). So I'm having trouble imagining what your character's dog is trained to do? I don'[t think dogs can be trained to call 911 in a heart emergency, or to give medication. If you can give me an example of what the dog is specifically trained to do, and what the person's limiations are, I can tell you if it would legally be considered a service animal or not.
If you want to create a situation with a service animal, is it possible to give your main character a different disability? If it doesn't impact the story. Or, if a heart condition is needed, can the character also have a sight condition? or something else that would require a service animal? I am assuming that for some reason in your story you want an animal with the right to accompany it's owner everywhere it goes. Here is another possibility, your character could be training a seeing eye dog, then it would have the same rights as a regular service animal. All your character would need is some experience as a dog trainer and a license from the state to be an official seeing eye dog trainer.
Also, it is true that under the ADA only seeing eye dogs need to be trained and certified by specific licensed trainers. All other kinds of service animals can be trained by anybody to perform the specific tasks, including the owner themselves. (many deaf people train their own hearing dogs).
Let me know if I can help you solve your quandry.
good luck and I hope that helps
friendof:
I stand corrected... I actually only meant to say what you said above about not having to be certified or specifically trained but you've explained it and said it much better than I! :)
saraswati:
No worries, friendof, we are all on the same team :) Hopefully my response didn't come across as too "territorial". I'm really glad you are here to answer stuff too. thanks!
Aggie80:
2. Estate disposition. If said person dies intestate and has no immediate family, how far is a search made for relatives before the estate is liquidated, and once liquidated, what happens to it?
Many places have a limit of how far they will search, usually within 3 degrees of relation (no laughing inheritors). They are typically not going to look at anyone aoutside the country if it is US. Without an heir, the estate will go to the state.
3. Estate disposition. If said person dies with a will leaving a blanket statement of "all worldly possessions to go to X", will that person have any difficulty in simply taking over the deceased's estate? Should there be an executor named? If they were in business and he is leaving the business to her could she keep it active while the will is being settled? Would any other person (like an ex-wife) be able to make any claims against the estate?
First step is to open the estate with the court. The court will almost always appoint an executor, (there are a few exceptions, but they are for very small estates). If there is a will as you mentioned, they may very well appoint them as executor. The executor will be responsible for maintaining and preserving the value of the estate, including continuing to run businesses. Yes, an ex-wife may be able to make claims against the estate and can surely file against it, success will depend on many factors.
wayzgoose:
I appreciate the estate information. Can the business owner make his employee a joint tenant with right of survivorship without her knowing? Would that circumvent the inheritance problem?
Aggie80:
Can the business owner make his employee a joint tenant with right of survivorship without her knowing?
Creation of a Joint Tenancy can be tricky. Certainly not without her knowing about it. For it to be done, both parties must acquire their interest at the same time, in equal shares. If the owner didn't set up the business as a Joint Tenancy, he can't 'give' half of it away. There are ways around it, but they do require costs for multiple title transfers and filing and taxes, etc. And both parties at that point would be fully responsible for their share of expenses, taxes and liabilities. And it is important to realize that Joint Tenants own real property, i.e., land or cash. Businesses are not held by Joint Tenants, thought the real property associated with a business could be. They could be partners with survivorship rights, but certainly not without knowledge. And the value of the business could get included in the estate.
Would that circumvent the inheritance problem?
Yes. The survivor simply files a copy of the death certificate to obtain a new deed or title.
Analise:
4. Search Warrant--From what I remember in my computer forensics class and my time working for a state attorney general's cyber crime office (and, of course, this is based off of couple-year-old memory and I don't claim to be an expert but thought I might help):
Many judges err on the side of being careful when it comes to computers. Therefore, when writing out a warrant, not only do you need a lawyer and a police officer, you also need someone who understands computers. Not only that, but you have to be careful of what you say you're searching. If you're looking for things that only should be found in say, the My Documents folder, but you search the entire computer, and your warrent says you were only looking in My Documents and you find evidence stashed away in some obscure folder somewhere, that might not be permissible, since you didn't specifically say you were searching the entire computer in the warrent.
Same goes for, if you go to seize the computer and there are disks right next to the computer (or one in the drive), if you only said you were searching the computer, that would mean the hard drive. You would need to have enumerated floppy/flash/cds/etc to be able to search those as well.
And as for the first question: I'm under the impression it would be just like any other search, if there's reason to believe it's a computer crime (ie. a crime committed either against/to a computer or a crime committed with the use of a computer, which embezzlement often is) then, yes. However, it might be difficult to prove that the evidence resides on their home computer (where that evidence of another crime might be) since that would involve work computers. Unless they somehow did it online, or kept a record of the embezzling on their computer (old emails with a confederate, spreadsheets detailing the money info), or perhaps a second set of "books" showing their "real" cash inflow.
Also, when searching computers, you need to keep in mind investigators have to be very careful about how they go about looking for evidence. They don't just crack the computer open and go to town, because even turning the computer on, or looking at a directory listing of files can change information about files that might useful and then the defense attorney could argue there's no way to prove that they weren't tampered with at that point. Instead, you have to use hardware that allows you to make a bit-for-bit copy of all the contents of the harddrive (or better, yet, make two or three, one to work with, one to give the defense, and one to save as backup) that you can search around to your heart's content.
Hope this helps? A little?
1. Disabilities. If a person with an extremely well-trained dog discovered they had a medical condition (heart failure) that required possible calls for aid, regular medication, etc., how difficult would it be to get said dog certified as a helper dog?
2. Estate disposition. If said person dies intestate and has no immediate family, how far is a search made for relatives before the estate is liquidated, and once liquidated, what happens to it?
3. Estate disposition. If said person dies with a will leaving a blanket statement of "all worldly possessions to go to X", will that person have any difficulty in simply taking over the deceased's estate? Should there be an executor named? If they were in business and he is leaving the business to her could she keep it active while the will is being settled? Would any other person (like an ex-wife) be able to make any claims against the estate?
4. Search warrants. If there is reason to suspect a cyber-crime has been committed, let's say embezzlement, can the authorities (police? FB I? FINCen?) get a search warrant for the contents of a computer? If in the act of searching for evidence of said crime, they find evidence of a different crime (say child porn) can they bring additional charges based on that discovery even though they had no reason to suspect that crime when the original warrant was issued?
Thanks to all of you and any who respond to these questions. I hope I haven't gotten myself into plot-hell with setting up these situations!
friendof:
(Disabilities) This is the only one I know a little something about (took a class on it in law school... hopefully I am remembering correctly).
Fortunatly for your story, it's really whatever you want. Not only is each state different, each city can be different if the state is silent on the issue (and I believe most are). A condo association that tries to keep the person from moving in or a store that seeks to block the dog from coming in can't stop a service animal (doesn't even have to be a dog) under the ADA . So what makes an animal a "service" animal? At least one court has said that the city ordinances can require "training" but can't require what form of training and can't require certification. Either way, it's a fairly new area of law... so I say go with whatever you want for your story. (If you want huge conflict over the issue, make the dog a pit bull in a city that's banned pit bulls!) :)
BLAH BLAH LEGAL DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVISE THIS IS JUST SOME GENERAL KNOWLEDGE BLAH BLAH.
wayzgoose:
Thank you. I'll check to see if there are any local ordinances in Seattle. Funny you should mention pit bulls. Maizie, in my story, is a cross between a pit bull and a dachsund. (Don't ask.)
friendof:
Honestly, I would be shocked to hear that Seattle doesn't have an ordinance involving pits and, sadly, pit mixes. If you want the dog to be able to get into places, you may need to change breeds (or have the vet write that it's a "dachsund mix" with no one any the wiser...). The second you mention pit bull, the city's interest in protecting citizens is likely going to outweigh any ADA requirements for reasonable accomodation. Some cities (like Miami) have banned pits completly and that's in people's private homes... allowing a pit bull service animal (even a mix) is even more of a risk to the public. Just something to keep in mind........
saraswati:
I am going to have to respectfully disagree with the previous poster (friendof) who gave info on service animals. This is my area of legal practice, so I might have a little bit more specifc info that may be helpful for you.
Yes, there are specific laws that vary from state to state (I can give you CA law specifically if you need it, but I don't have info on any other state), but the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and case law does explicitly define what a service animal is, and what it must do to qualify as a service animal. So there is actually a very clear answer to your question.
(what friendof may be referring to is that there are no set limits right now on what kind of animals can be considered service animals. People have claimed monkeys and snakes and things like that are service animals, and sometimes it sticks. Also, there is still some vaugeness in what "tasks" a service animal performs for someone who is claiming a mental illness as a disability. But for physical disabilities, the law is pretty clear. )
To be considered a "service animal", the animal must be trained to perform a specific task that relates to the disability. However, here is some more info. Not all medical conditions are "disabilities". In order to be a disability under the ADA, the medical condition must severely limit a daily activity, such as seeing, hearing, moving, walking, showering, etc. So first of all, your character's heart condition must be severe enough that it affects their daily life and keeps them from performing basic life tasks. If the heart condition is so severe that they can't get around without a walker or wheelchair, or that they are prone to severe dizzy spells, fainting, or can't drive. Then it might be a disability. Usually disabilities under the ADA are mobility based (paralysis, wheelchair, cane), sensory-based (blind, deaf), general auto-immune based (HIV, Lupus), nervous system failures, or mental illnesses.
Bottom line, if the heart condition leaves them frail enough to qualify under the ADA, they are going to have some severe limitations in their daily life.
Now under CA law, you don't need to be quite so ill, but that's CA law.
Second, any animals that you want to qualify as service animals must be trained to do specific tasks that alleviate the disability in question. So, for example, seeing eye dogs do tasks assisting with blindness. And hearing dogs alert their owners to sounds (like a doorbell or phone or siren). So I'm having trouble imagining what your character's dog is trained to do? I don'[t think dogs can be trained to call 911 in a heart emergency, or to give medication. If you can give me an example of what the dog is specifically trained to do, and what the person's limiations are, I can tell you if it would legally be considered a service animal or not.
If you want to create a situation with a service animal, is it possible to give your main character a different disability? If it doesn't impact the story. Or, if a heart condition is needed, can the character also have a sight condition? or something else that would require a service animal? I am assuming that for some reason in your story you want an animal with the right to accompany it's owner everywhere it goes. Here is another possibility, your character could be training a seeing eye dog, then it would have the same rights as a regular service animal. All your character would need is some experience as a dog trainer and a license from the state to be an official seeing eye dog trainer.
Also, it is true that under the ADA only seeing eye dogs need to be trained and certified by specific licensed trainers. All other kinds of service animals can be trained by anybody to perform the specific tasks, including the owner themselves. (many deaf people train their own hearing dogs).
Let me know if I can help you solve your quandry.
good luck and I hope that helps
friendof:
I stand corrected... I actually only meant to say what you said above about not having to be certified or specifically trained but you've explained it and said it much better than I! :)
saraswati:
No worries, friendof, we are all on the same team :) Hopefully my response didn't come across as too "territorial". I'm really glad you are here to answer stuff too. thanks!
Aggie80:
2. Estate disposition. If said person dies intestate and has no immediate family, how far is a search made for relatives before the estate is liquidated, and once liquidated, what happens to it?
Many places have a limit of how far they will search, usually within 3 degrees of relation (no laughing inheritors). They are typically not going to look at anyone aoutside the country if it is US. Without an heir, the estate will go to the state.
3. Estate disposition. If said person dies with a will leaving a blanket statement of "all worldly possessions to go to X", will that person have any difficulty in simply taking over the deceased's estate? Should there be an executor named? If they were in business and he is leaving the business to her could she keep it active while the will is being settled? Would any other person (like an ex-wife) be able to make any claims against the estate?
First step is to open the estate with the court. The court will almost always appoint an executor, (there are a few exceptions, but they are for very small estates). If there is a will as you mentioned, they may very well appoint them as executor. The executor will be responsible for maintaining and preserving the value of the estate, including continuing to run businesses. Yes, an ex-wife may be able to make claims against the estate and can surely file against it, success will depend on many factors.
wayzgoose:
I appreciate the estate information. Can the business owner make his employee a joint tenant with right of survivorship without her knowing? Would that circumvent the inheritance problem?
Aggie80:
Can the business owner make his employee a joint tenant with right of survivorship without her knowing?
Creation of a Joint Tenancy can be tricky. Certainly not without her knowing about it. For it to be done, both parties must acquire their interest at the same time, in equal shares. If the owner didn't set up the business as a Joint Tenancy, he can't 'give' half of it away. There are ways around it, but they do require costs for multiple title transfers and filing and taxes, etc. And both parties at that point would be fully responsible for their share of expenses, taxes and liabilities. And it is important to realize that Joint Tenants own real property, i.e., land or cash. Businesses are not held by Joint Tenants, thought the real property associated with a business could be. They could be partners with survivorship rights, but certainly not without knowledge. And the value of the business could get included in the estate.
Would that circumvent the inheritance problem?
Yes. The survivor simply files a copy of the death certificate to obtain a new deed or title.
Analise:
4. Search Warrant--From what I remember in my computer forensics class and my time working for a state attorney general's cyber crime office (and, of course, this is based off of couple-year-old memory and I don't claim to be an expert but thought I might help):
Many judges err on the side of being careful when it comes to computers. Therefore, when writing out a warrant, not only do you need a lawyer and a police officer, you also need someone who understands computers. Not only that, but you have to be careful of what you say you're searching. If you're looking for things that only should be found in say, the My Documents folder, but you search the entire computer, and your warrent says you were only looking in My Documents and you find evidence stashed away in some obscure folder somewhere, that might not be permissible, since you didn't specifically say you were searching the entire computer in the warrent.
Same goes for, if you go to seize the computer and there are disks right next to the computer (or one in the drive), if you only said you were searching the computer, that would mean the hard drive. You would need to have enumerated floppy/flash/cds/etc to be able to search those as well.
And as for the first question: I'm under the impression it would be just like any other search, if there's reason to believe it's a computer crime (ie. a crime committed either against/to a computer or a crime committed with the use of a computer, which embezzlement often is) then, yes. However, it might be difficult to prove that the evidence resides on their home computer (where that evidence of another crime might be) since that would involve work computers. Unless they somehow did it online, or kept a record of the embezzling on their computer (old emails with a confederate, spreadsheets detailing the money info), or perhaps a second set of "books" showing their "real" cash inflow.
Also, when searching computers, you need to keep in mind investigators have to be very careful about how they go about looking for evidence. They don't just crack the computer open and go to town, because even turning the computer on, or looking at a directory listing of files can change information about files that might useful and then the defense attorney could argue there's no way to prove that they weren't tampered with at that point. Instead, you have to use hardware that allows you to make a bit-for-bit copy of all the contents of the harddrive (or better, yet, make two or three, one to work with, one to give the defense, and one to save as backup) that you can search around to your heart's content.
Hope this helps? A little?
My MC works in Computer Forensics. In essence, he has a warrant to search a laptop computer. The laptop has been connected to a corporate system and the user had high-level administrative privileges on the network. He is in physical possession of the laptop and can start it, slave it, remove the HD and examine it remotely. The one thing I really don't want him to do is physically work on the laptop in any way other than his initial set-up, in other words, put it in an environment where he can get to it via a VPN from his own device and keep it firewalled from infecting his systems if it is contagious.
1. What kind of protection of files will my detective encounter when he cracks the laptop?
2. What tools would he typically use to gain access to passwords or other secure information?
3. How would he identify various security protocols (like encryption or file fuzzing) and how would he break through them?
4. How long would it take to gain access to the corporate network if he had the laptop in range to access the corporate wifi net?
The answers to these will undoubtedly bring up a number of others, but I've found your previous answers to questions to be most informative and enjoyable. Thank you for sharing your expertise!
KarenRei:
If he's removing the hard drive, he has no reason to ever boot up the laptop. Use it as a secondary drive in another system, and everything is his, assuming it's your typical windows or mac box (and even most unix boxes). Only the rare system indeed has an actually encrypted hard drive.
What sort of passwords are we talking about here? Passwords to online sites? You could look through the browser cache or use the default methods (trojans, social engineering, dictionary attacks, etc). Passwords to encrypted files? The only good way to get those are the default methods. If you want to scan the entire hard drive for information that might be out there (deleted or not), I personally would use 'dd' and grep the output for a string that I expected to be near the given type of password that I'm looking for.
Note that with many things, a password is far from the only way to get into a system. Unexpired session information, for example, can do the trick.
Most encrypted files are quite obvious that they're encrypted. That's the difference between encryption and steganography -- encryption is out in the open but algorithmically scrambled. Steganography is covert encoding of information into data so that one doesn't know that the data is there. Cracking good, modern encryption (none of this 40 bit nonsense) is essentially impossible. However, there are always "tricks" for a given situation.
Example: During the early 1980s, American encryption was essentially impossible for the Soviets to crack. That didn't stop them. I had a friend who worked in SIGINT at the time, and they started realizing that the Soviets knew what was going on in US encrypted channels during American war games. How did they do it? They ignored what data they were seing. Instead, they payed attention to the patterns in transmissions -- when they started, how long they lasted for, what the back and forth was, etc. From that, they could deduce what was being sent. ;)
How long to gain access to a corporate network with a laptop that used to be on the network? Instantly, if they can log in. ;) Even easier, with WiFi, you often can just sniff passwords and/or spoof MAC addresses; it's often very poorly secured. Even if they use WEP, there's programs like AirSnort. You really need WPA or WPA-2 to have any sort of decent security. Security conferences have been known to post the passwords of people who connect to WiFi during them. ;)
Lets pretend that it's a secure wireless network. If the laptop is a "home edition", or isn't configured well, the administrator password (safe mode) will be blank by default, so they could easily use that to log in. Lets assume it's not. You can do things like replace logon.scr with cmd.exe or explorer.exe. Or you can use one of the half-million tools to get/change user account passwords .
Did I mention that Windows is really insecure? ;)
The only way to get an actually "secure" laptop out there is to use a Unix distro that has an honest-to-god encrypted hard disk. Most unix systems, by far, don't do this. Only the most paranoid actually have encrypted partitions. I once kept my mp3s and videos on an encrypted partition. It was a pain; I decided it wasn't worth it.
If the hard disk itself is encrypted, you're in trouble. You need to go back to the aforementioned possibilities -- trojans, social engineering, dictionary attacks, getting passwords from other sources and seing if they work on the hard drive, etc.
crossmagus:
@Wayzgoose - This is not very different from a forensic project that I am working on right now. The main thing is that if any of his findings are to be used as evidence in court, then he will need to assure the courts that nothing he did has changed the content of that drive. So in all likelyhood, he would remove the drive and attach it to a write-block device - usually they act as IDE-to-Firewire devices but they proevent anything from writng to the laptop drive. He would make at least two copies of the drive, evidence bag the laptop drive and also one copy. Then he would make multiple copies of his second copy and use those for his analysis.
If he needed to run the executable code on the drive, he would probably do it from within a VM sandbox. Using a virtual machine that has limited connectivity it can't infect anything else. There are tools that would change the hardware drivers to allow the image to work well with the virtualized hardware.
This is if his data is going to court. Now this sort of analysis does not require a warrant - that is used to grab the system and bring it to him. The case i have now we are investigating an executive, but obtained the image of his drive without his knowledge. This did not require a warrant, but rather the permission of the owner of the laptop - the employing corporation.
For quick work like that, I like to use a bootable Live Linux CD based on Knoppix or Slax. Helix is an example of a forensic toolkit of open source tools that is free and very useful - I can attach a USB drive and copy the image to the USB drive wthout ever booting the laptop's os (it booted from CD). If he's a professional and/or law enforcement he is most likely to use EnCase or The Forensiscs Toolkit (TFK) as his primary analysis tool and Helix supports both their native formats. If not, Helix has a batch of tools itself.
Helix used to have a set of tools for lifting tha SAM and other password-realted files, but recent versions have removed those tools. I use another live CD called Backtrack to do that sort of work and copy them to the USB drive for later password analysis. I can crack the passwords with a dictionary attack in a short while (about 85% of the paswords) but more and more for really complex passwords, i can subscribe to a Rainbow cracking service or have the database locally - these are essentally databases of the hashed passwords to compare with what s on the disk so I just find the matching hash and I know the password. depending upon complexity, these databases can run up to a terabyte (1024 Gb) or more. These are widely available to download off the web or there are even web services that rent you the computer and database. My local law enforcement forensics lab just keeps a set on a system just for that purpose.
As to encryption, that is an interesting question. I had a chance to talk about a major FBI sting operation with some of their forensics specialists and i was curious as to how much encryption they were running into from the collected computers they were analyzing. Their answer shocked me - none at all. In this case, the criminals didn't want anything to get between them and their content. In a different case the man in Seattle accused of murdering the parents and raping and killing the brother of the girl that was rescued was a self-styled computer expert and the clipping I read had him boasting that they will need decades to decrypt the data for his possible involvement with other victims.
While not computer related, recently a mob boss was found to have used a "ceasar cypher" thousands of years old to encrypt his paper notes - not realizing how easily it could be ed today. Bruce Schneir wrote about it a while ago.
Just some extra data for you....
KarenRei:
Interesting to know that people working in computer forensics use Knoppix! Quick question: if you're making a complete disk image, why do you need to have tools to lift the password with you? With an image, it seems you could do that back in your office when there aren't as strict time constraints.
Heh, I got a good kick out of the Bernardo Provenzano case when I first read about it, too. ;) That's what you get when you try to use a principle that you don't understand. Really, though, most people wouldn't know how to even encrypt a file if their life depended on it, let alone to use an encrypted loopback filesystem.
1. What kind of protection of files will my detective encounter when he cracks the laptop?
2. What tools would he typically use to gain access to passwords or other secure information?
3. How would he identify various security protocols (like encryption or file fuzzing) and how would he break through them?
4. How long would it take to gain access to the corporate network if he had the laptop in range to access the corporate wifi net?
The answers to these will undoubtedly bring up a number of others, but I've found your previous answers to questions to be most informative and enjoyable. Thank you for sharing your expertise!
KarenRei:
If he's removing the hard drive, he has no reason to ever boot up the laptop. Use it as a secondary drive in another system, and everything is his, assuming it's your typical windows or mac box (and even most unix boxes). Only the rare system indeed has an actually encrypted hard drive.
What sort of passwords are we talking about here? Passwords to online sites? You could look through the browser cache or use the default methods (trojans, social engineering, dictionary attacks, etc). Passwords to encrypted files? The only good way to get those are the default methods. If you want to scan the entire hard drive for information that might be out there (deleted or not), I personally would use 'dd' and grep the output for a string that I expected to be near the given type of password that I'm looking for.
Note that with many things, a password is far from the only way to get into a system. Unexpired session information, for example, can do the trick.
Most encrypted files are quite obvious that they're encrypted. That's the difference between encryption and steganography -- encryption is out in the open but algorithmically scrambled. Steganography is covert encoding of information into data so that one doesn't know that the data is there. Cracking good, modern encryption (none of this 40 bit nonsense) is essentially impossible. However, there are always "tricks" for a given situation.
Example: During the early 1980s, American encryption was essentially impossible for the Soviets to crack. That didn't stop them. I had a friend who worked in SIGINT at the time, and they started realizing that the Soviets knew what was going on in US encrypted channels during American war games. How did they do it? They ignored what data they were seing. Instead, they payed attention to the patterns in transmissions -- when they started, how long they lasted for, what the back and forth was, etc. From that, they could deduce what was being sent. ;)
How long to gain access to a corporate network with a laptop that used to be on the network? Instantly, if they can log in. ;) Even easier, with WiFi, you often can just sniff passwords and/or spoof MAC addresses; it's often very poorly secured. Even if they use WEP, there's programs like AirSnort. You really need WPA or WPA-2 to have any sort of decent security. Security conferences have been known to post the passwords of people who connect to WiFi during them. ;)
Lets pretend that it's a secure wireless network. If the laptop is a "home edition", or isn't configured well, the administrator password (safe mode) will be blank by default, so they could easily use that to log in. Lets assume it's not. You can do things like replace logon.scr with cmd.exe or explorer.exe. Or you can use one of the half-million tools to get/change user account passwords .
Did I mention that Windows is really insecure? ;)
The only way to get an actually "secure" laptop out there is to use a Unix distro that has an honest-to-god encrypted hard disk. Most unix systems, by far, don't do this. Only the most paranoid actually have encrypted partitions. I once kept my mp3s and videos on an encrypted partition. It was a pain; I decided it wasn't worth it.
If the hard disk itself is encrypted, you're in trouble. You need to go back to the aforementioned possibilities -- trojans, social engineering, dictionary attacks, getting passwords from other sources and seing if they work on the hard drive, etc.
crossmagus:
@Wayzgoose - This is not very different from a forensic project that I am working on right now. The main thing is that if any of his findings are to be used as evidence in court, then he will need to assure the courts that nothing he did has changed the content of that drive. So in all likelyhood, he would remove the drive and attach it to a write-block device - usually they act as IDE-to-Firewire devices but they proevent anything from writng to the laptop drive. He would make at least two copies of the drive, evidence bag the laptop drive and also one copy. Then he would make multiple copies of his second copy and use those for his analysis.
If he needed to run the executable code on the drive, he would probably do it from within a VM sandbox. Using a virtual machine that has limited connectivity it can't infect anything else. There are tools that would change the hardware drivers to allow the image to work well with the virtualized hardware.
This is if his data is going to court. Now this sort of analysis does not require a warrant - that is used to grab the system and bring it to him. The case i have now we are investigating an executive, but obtained the image of his drive without his knowledge. This did not require a warrant, but rather the permission of the owner of the laptop - the employing corporation.
For quick work like that, I like to use a bootable Live Linux CD based on Knoppix or Slax. Helix is an example of a forensic toolkit of open source tools that is free and very useful - I can attach a USB drive and copy the image to the USB drive wthout ever booting the laptop's os (it booted from CD). If he's a professional and/or law enforcement he is most likely to use EnCase or The Forensiscs Toolkit (TFK) as his primary analysis tool and Helix supports both their native formats. If not, Helix has a batch of tools itself.
Helix used to have a set of tools for lifting tha SAM and other password-realted files, but recent versions have removed those tools. I use another live CD called Backtrack to do that sort of work and copy them to the USB drive for later password analysis. I can crack the passwords with a dictionary attack in a short while (about 85% of the paswords) but more and more for really complex passwords, i can subscribe to a Rainbow cracking service or have the database locally - these are essentally databases of the hashed passwords to compare with what s on the disk so I just find the matching hash and I know the password. depending upon complexity, these databases can run up to a terabyte (1024 Gb) or more. These are widely available to download off the web or there are even web services that rent you the computer and database. My local law enforcement forensics lab just keeps a set on a system just for that purpose.
As to encryption, that is an interesting question. I had a chance to talk about a major FBI sting operation with some of their forensics specialists and i was curious as to how much encryption they were running into from the collected computers they were analyzing. Their answer shocked me - none at all. In this case, the criminals didn't want anything to get between them and their content. In a different case the man in Seattle accused of murdering the parents and raping and killing the brother of the girl that was rescued was a self-styled computer expert and the clipping I read had him boasting that they will need decades to decrypt the data for his possible involvement with other victims.
While not computer related, recently a mob boss was found to have used a "ceasar cypher" thousands of years old to encrypt his paper notes - not realizing how easily it could be ed today. Bruce Schneir wrote about it a while ago.
Just some extra data for you....
KarenRei:
Interesting to know that people working in computer forensics use Knoppix! Quick question: if you're making a complete disk image, why do you need to have tools to lift the password with you? With an image, it seems you could do that back in your office when there aren't as strict time constraints.
Heh, I got a good kick out of the Bernardo Provenzano case when I first read about it, too. ;) That's what you get when you try to use a principle that you don't understand. Really, though, most people wouldn't know how to even encrypt a file if their life depended on it, let alone to use an encrypted loopback filesystem.
15 October 2006
- Monday, November 6: Billie the Kid
- Conversation with the Doctor
Dag goes to see his doctor on Monday morning for what we find is a routine visit, but also find that he has not reported the incident. He has a lump on his head, however, and scrapes on various parts of his body. The Doctor warns him that he has to avoid “falls” like that. Right now he’s in good shape for a heart transplant, but frankly the heart is failing fast and it is a race to get a donor in time. - Meeting the kid
As Dag leaves the doctor’s office (at the hospital) he meets Billie coming in. She is eight years old and a little tiger with a sharp sense of humor. She asks Dag if he has a bad heart. Anyone seeing this particular doctor has a bad heart. She blatantly says “Mine’s going to kill me if I don’t get a new one soon.” Billie’s mother tries to hush her, but Dag is fully engaged and when the nurse takes Billie back to be weighed, he talks to the mother to find out about Billie. Here’s where we have to answer some of the basic questions about waiting for a heart transplant, statistics, likelihood, etc. - Stoney silence
Riley picks Dag up at the hospital and takes him home in silence. Dag realizes she is still angry with him. We discover that Riley picked Dag up and took him home after he was hit Saturday night. When they get to Dag’s house, they pick up Maizie from Mrs. Prior and find that she is wearing a yellow jacket as a helper dog. Mrs. Prior explains that she can carry Dag’s medicine and that this way they can catch a bus whenever they want to. - Footwork for Riley
In order to appease Riley, who will not let Dag return to the office for the rest of the day, Dag tells her about his meeting with Angel and suggests that she drove off just before he fell. He asks Riley to try to find her and make sure she “got home okay.” Riley heads out and Dag collapses into his easy chair to rest.
- Conversation with the Doctor
- Tuesday, November 7: Just the Facts
- Visit from FinCen
Dag is in the office looking up additional records when Silas comes in. Silas wants to know what Dag has found and we discover in the process that Silas is on the trail of a major money laundering scheme that points to Simon’s company. He stops short of saying Simon was involved, but suggests that any information that Dag uncovers would be of interest, including Simon’s location. - Another client
After Silas leaves, a “walk-in” comes in with a laptop that has been dumped in water. The client says he’d really like to recover his files from the hard drive. Dag agrees to do his best and asks what kind of files he is looking for. After suggesting several types, the client says his e-mail and “those favorite thingies.” Dag tells him to come back at 5:00. - Just a travel agent
Acting on Angel’s tip, Dag starts to track down travel records for Simon. He can find no ticket purchases in any of his financial records or credit cards. Puzzled, he calls Brenda about Simon’s travel plans and where he was going. She says he took the jet, of course. It is news to Dag that Simon had a private jet and he begins tracking down its records and flight plans. He discovers that it did, indeed go to Singapore and return, but that US Customs has no record of Simon having been on the plane. - Angel has a boyfriend
When Riley returns, she brings Maizie in with her and comes with the news that Angel lives with a man who is reputed to be violent and possessive. Not only is he her boyfriend, but he works at Stocks & Blondes. She says he has been known to assault clients who were too friendly with Angel. Dag begins to suspect that it was the boyfriend who attacked him, and might be the cause of Simon’s sudden disappearance.
- Visit from FinCen
- Wednesday, November 8: A Partner Calls
- Put up or shut up
Riley comes into Dag’s office to talk and becomes provocative. She makes another proposition to him and Dag tells her to put up or shut up. They get their coats and Dag walks her down to Pier 56 where they engage in a number of video games and pinball, ride the merry-go-round, get fish and chips, and head back to the office. - Maizie on guard
Bradley Keane, has come in while they were gone, intent on stealing the computer. When Dag & Riley return, Maizie is sitting on Brad in Dag's office growling. Brad tells Dag that Brenda had no right to give him the computer and that if he doesn’t get the data from the computer, their client will be furious. Brad is revealed to be sneaky and blustery, but unable to take a punch when Riley kicks him in the stomach. Bradley is the type of person who would leave all the dirty work to someone else. (Possible clue: Dag may spot a thumbdrive on a chain around the partner’s neck when he is putting himself back together after Maizie took him down.) - Information please
A subdued Bradley turns to charm and cooperation as he spins a story of a partner who has wronged him. He believes his partner has embezzled funds from one of their clients and wants to get the information from the computer. Dag leads him on, telling him that if he finds anything he’ll be sure to let Bradley know. He even offers to put the computer back together if Bradley can show that the company owns it and not Simon personally. Bradley backs off and it is suddenly okay to just be kept informed. He spends some time trying to get into Dag’s method for recovering the data and Dag may throw him some bones. - Riley on a mission
After they talk for a while, during which Dag comments on Riley’s martial arts skills, Riley is sent back to the library for more information on Simon and Bradley’s business. Dag lies down to nap. He awakens to the phone and Riley tells him that she has some info. The info proves to suggest that Simon and Bradley are highly diversified, including investment funds from hidden corporations and a tangle of holding companies. Dag is ready to get back to work, but finds that after he takes Maizie out he is too tired to walk home and stretches out in the office to sleep. Out the window he can see an office building with a light in a window that is in his eyes no matter how he shifts his position.
- Put up or shut up
- Thursday, November 9: Day in court
- Maizie goes to camp
Dag drops Maizie off in the morning with Mrs. Prior to go to day camp. Mrs. Prior has something to say about how Maizie worries about Dag. Riley picks up Dag to take him to court and Dag suggests that she find out the name of Simon and Bradley’s WiFi Network - Dag goes to court
Dag talks about being an expert witness in a trial in which an employee is accused of theft. Dag has deconstructed the employee’s computer and testifies that there are files that incriminate the employee. While waiting for his case to be called, Dag conducts text message conversations with Riley and proceeds to use his VPN to tap into the network. He does this with his laptop, VPN to his network, to Riley’s laptop (in the women’s room), to Bradley’s network. In this way, Dag downloads all the company’s critical financial data to his network and starts sifting through it. Riley also sees Bradley coming and going from the office and sees Brenda come for a visit. - Partner in court
While in court, Dag meets Silas. None of what Dag has learned is admissible, so Silas suggests that Dag investigate the source more fully, possibly leading to a suggestion to go to Chicago. There is a question as to whether Silas is telling Dag everything, but Dag puts the idea into his hopper. - Maizie comes home
When Riley drops Dag off at home, he picks Maizie from Mrs. Prior. Maizie has had a big day and won a costume contest. Some other silliness.
- Maizie goes to camp
- Friday, November 10: Partners in Crime
- Maizie the pirate
Maizie and Dag walk to the office together with everyone exclaiming about her costume, which she has refused to take off since the dog day the day before. Dag is long-suffering about his sissy guard dog. It doesn’t help when Riley gets all gushy in the office. - Uncovering the nasty business
Dag works on unravelling the accounting records and discovers a spiderweb of shell companies and holdings and at least three sets of books. It is impossible to know who owns what and how it is managed. In addition, Riley is doing research on the businesses as Dag uncovers them and discovers that Stocks & Blondes is one of their businesses. - Brenda takes a vacation
Much to Dag’s surprise, Brenda calls to tell him she is going to be gone for a week on vacation. She wants to know what progress Dag has made and Dag chooses not to tell her the truth of what is going on in the investigation. Brenda reiterates that it was Simon who said she should go to Dag if anything ever happened, much against her better judgment. She is as emasculating as possible. - Planting suggestions
Dag calls Bradley and tells him that Simon’s computer has some accounting anomalies on it that suggest that Simon may not have been playing above board. He’s thinking he should turn it over to the Feds. Bradley goes into an immediate sales job on why Dag should keep it and pursue the leads. In fact, Bradley is willing to increase Dag’s fee that he’s getting from Brenda to keep trying to locate Simon because that is the only way that Bradley will get his name cleared. Bradley suggests investigating a business that Simon had in Chicago.
- Maizie the pirate
- Saturday, November 11: I learned the secret of life the day after my 42nd birthday
- The workload at the office.
Dag talks about having been a loyal employee of a major accounting and consultancy firm for 17 years. How on that day he had handled problem after problem errorlessly and that when the day was done he realized that he knew everything except why he was in this job. The dream had always been to have his own business. So he quit. - Going back to school
Dag tells about how Lars greeted his suggestion and took him on as an agent for the three years that it took for him to establish himself as an independent investigator. He talks about this time as the time that he met Silas as well. There was always something special about the relationship of the three of them, but Dag could never bring himself to trust the relationship fully. He’d had friends before. - Advice from a mentor
Dag remembers a conversation with Lars that says “If you open the floodgates, you have to wade in the water.” It was his way of saying that if you really got into a case, you would get dirty from it. Dag uses the advice to make the decision to go to Chicago and books his tickets.
- The workload at the office.
13 October 2006
Things I learned about Deb Riley
So I gave Deb Riley a 70-question interview and she's posted half of it in her journal, then had to run off to watch Battlestar Galactica. I learned some things about her that are very telling. She is a real loner, but with at least one good friend. The friend, Teri, will have to be developed in a future work if I take Deb further. There are interesting things that have come out regarding her childhood. Her mother was a real nut-case and she related to her father mostly. But it doesn't sound like either one of them are around anymore. And the photo thing about all her photos of places she's been were taken in photo booths... I imagine that if you walked into her apartment and saw a picture of her with her parents it would be a very carefully photoshopped image of two people who look like they should have been her parents with one of those photo booth photos airbrushed into the picture. And suddenly there were the keys on her keyring. Two keys for her apartment (building door and apartment door), two for her beater car (trunk and ignition), the office key, and a key her father gave her telling her it was to a treasure chest and she should keep it in case she finds the chest! My god, there's a whole story right there! She also made an off-the-cuff comment that made me think she might be bi- or at least open to any possibility.
Things I learned about Dag Hamar
Now about Dag. I really haven't posted too much about Dag lately because a lot of the notes I've made could be giving away parts of the actualy story. I don't know why that makes a difference, but I've been shy about telling the actual things that would happen and spoiling the story for anyone who reads it. I don't know why I expect anyone here to actually read it, but... So one thing has been bugging me this evening: I have one scene planned (an entire, very short chapter) that is mostly profanity. I mean vulgar, disgusting, don't say it on TV and don't put it in public, I didn't know the human body could do that kind of thing invective. Dag thinks he is dying in a hotel room in Georgia and goes through anger, humiliation, despair, and mourning, all while swearing at himself and forcing himself to keep breathing no matter how much it hurts. I don't know in my mind how better to express this. He isn't a religious man so he's not going to go through prayer or a religious conversion. And he's not going to sit for a chapter in silence moaning.
The only reason this becomes an issue is because I might have an opportunity to post the blog in a very public forum that has asked for G-rated content. It is really the only scene that the language would be hard in. Even when he's in the private strip-club the content isn't all that racy. A little suggestive, but probably way over the head of anyone young enough to be offended by it. There are a couple scenes where someone undresses or is partially undressed in front of someone else, but there's no overt sex, no matter how suggestive Riley is. Dag will ask Riley why she calls Brenda a muffin-top and Riley will make some gestures and say she packs a size 12 body into a size 8 dress and needs someone to do a bra fitting for her. I think that's still G. My daughter would read it, but of course, she's 13 now.
Another thing I discovered is that at the end of the story, Dag checks himself out of the hospital (or just leaves) and goes home to be with his dog and die. There won't be any mad rush of doctors as the heart monitor flatlines. Dag will be truly dead. That may be more than can be said for the victim in the story, but that will be for Riley to discover in December.
I can't believe that I'm planning the sequel that Riley narrates in December before I've even started writing the story, but here is the thing: NaNoWriMo story is "Security & Exchange" and I've opened the blog for it. The name of the story for December, which I expect will simply be posted on debriley is "Municipal Bondage". So it's real enough in my mind now to actually have a title. Can I maintain the pace of writing a chapter a day through the month of December? I'm not going to tell my wife!
04 October 2006
I'm pretty sure it was her, though she looked a little younger than I imagined. Also a little blonder. But she had lots of curly hair and a big smile. She was with a friend eating at the Taj Palace in Bellevue. Don't know what brought her all the way to the east side, but maybe she was slumming. She ate the Indian food with gusto.
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