Casimir Effect Novella

About 5 years ago the director wrote a shot story as part of a science fiction convention competition, the story was never finished but the core of it was developed. The story of the first time traveller, as woman as yet unnamed who tried to travel into her own past to give herself advice to stop her life going to hell, she was similar to Alice, but was originally married to Bob and the time travel experiment failed. Rather than travelling through time, the plot revolved around alternate universes and ended up with several different Alice’s? A great story, but possibly not a great movie, I won’t give too much away as not to spoil the better bits which we kept.

We took some of the core elements of the story, and reworked them to make them more filmic and visually interesting. We also brought in other character from the NeuroSys setting, characters we knew well and loved who would add an element of intrigue and subtle hints to clandestine events and activates. This would also bring Casimir Effect into a bigger and more vibrant world which could be used to add depth and substance to the story. This also offers us a bigger world to use should we get the chance to expand or redevelop Casimir Effect for television.

In December 2008 we planned the core plot points or each character using index cards, we shuffled them around until we had a structure and plot development that was interesting and offered an air of mystery.  The cards sat on our wall for about 2 months each few days we looked it over added or move something to make the story as interesting as possible. We then told the cards down and left it for a few more months, to give us time to detach ourselves from it so we could come back with fresh ideas.

April 2009 we began the first draft of the treatment, however we realised that to get the most out of the story we had to write it as prose rather than a condensed treatment. This enabled us to dig deeper into the characters and the subtext of the story. So we batted the Novell back and forth until we reached the fourth draft, then we let it out to people we knew and trusted to give us solid feedback about what is wrong and what is right. We then worked hard on the fifth draft to make it tight and keep the characterisation consistent.

By this time it was June and we started to look at turning the story into a script, we know we would have to change things and loose some elements but this is how things go when adapting a story.

In the next instalment, script development, revisions and read throughs.

<< Read Casimir Effect Origins part I

NeuroSys

We’re going to put together a series of posts for our readers; these will details of the origins of the story, world and characters. We will introduce you to some of the complexities within the back story and give insight into the world without giving the plot away.

NeuroSys was the origin of the original story so it’s only fair to start there, and go more into the world of 2101 and how we came up with this world. NeuroSys was the original idea of our director; many years ago we were sat on a train to Stafford discussing ideas for writing companion books for role playing games. The original concept was a style guide to one of the sub cultures that inhabit the cities of the world. This covered a number of concepts of how society will develop, some of the people in one of the biggest cities, and many of the best shopping and night spots. Needless  to say that style guide was never finished; it was left for a while.

A few months later we decided that there was a large amount of stories that could be told in the world that was created. So we started expanding sections, creating new sections and generally playing around in the world seeing how society was constructed and worked together. As we started to build up a model of society, we looked at how the world worked, the companies and political organisation involved and we created Iolanthus and Iolanthe as the new generation of cities designed to protect the important people who work for the Hyper Corporations, the biggest being run by Cromwell Jackson.

Studying the latest scientific developments and keeping a massive folder full of research and information, we started to apply futurist principles to see how the society we created would evolve along with the emerging technology. Simple things like the death of the TV, mobile phones and how the internet morphs into the next generation with quantum computing. We even looked at small things gadgets and gizmos, up to the next generation of personal body armour and defence.

The core concept was that the governments of the world slowly failed, selling off departments and the military saving money where they can. These department were brought out by companies and privately run military took over the old jobs, they were more efficient and better equipped. The inevitable might happen and the Corporations started hostile takeovers and buy outs, leaving a handful of Hyper Corporations and puppet governments. Society back-lashed and formed the World Council a governing body setup to protect the rights of the people and make laws.

The principle components were setup, to start building the small parts that function or dysfunction within this setting. We started creating the people that populate the city of Iolanthus, and numerous other aspects of the world from other AI controlled cities to a lunar base program.

Now we have a file with reams of information on the setting and characters. These were an excellent source for developing the story for Casimir Effect.

Casimir Effect Origins Part II >>