An anatomy of a story

The Anatomy of a Story

Vlfouquet

 

I write stories and post them online at many places, e.g. Fine stories, Storiesonline, Blog on wordpress and a few erotica story sites. One of my critiques of my stories is the detail. I once mention that when writing I tried to envision just how I would do something from a burglary, robbery, and assassination to just anything else that pop up in the story.

 

In other words, I do a bit of research. I recently read an article on the finding and recovery of a narco-sub in the Caribbean. My thoughts were I could use that in one of my stories. So there I was writing about this miniature sub being loaded on the west coast of Mexico and the sub heading north to the USA.  I did a double take, what the range of this sub? How big? How much fuel and what type? How many crew and how much cargo.

 

You see? Each and every one of these question plus more can have a bearing on the story. So I stopped and began researching. Wow! What my plot was would not be what the drug smugglers would do. Which I really don’t understand. The subs are used to transport the cocaine from South America to Mexico.  Where land transport is used to smuggle it into the USA>

An interview by of a capture sub operator told that 90% of all the sub transports were successful. The minimum size of the cargo is 6 ton. The larger sub 50-60 feet can carry up to 30 tons of cargo. The fist semi-submergible was found in 1993. In 2008 USA official stated they were spotting an average of 10 per month, but only able to intercept 1 out of 10 see the statement of the drug smuggler above.

 

Now the drug cartels are construction real submarines, able to dive to 300 feet cruise 2,000 miles. Now, I look at this and asked myself what the heck is wrong with our government. 6 ton is more then what a complete nuclear bomb weighs. It especially is more than any biological or chemical weapon weights. With a 90% successful rate of delivery!

 

The drug war budget is lopsided. On one side we and all are governments that bow to us. Are spending billions to stop the flow of drugs into the USA< with a 10% success, the drug cartels with a few paltry millions paying to get the drugs into the United States. One trip is worth 200 million dollars. Ten attempts 90% success is 1.800 billion dollars, our efforts are like mopping up the water from Katrina with a mop.

 

Anyway, in my story a terrorist will capture one of the narco-sub in Mexico and use it to smuggle a WMD into the United States. The Hero will find out about this and notify DHS. Who will ignore it under the “not discovered here” so he has to act himself.

So you see the characters, the plot, the interaction of characters and organizations in the story all have to first conform to facts or the authors license to twist the facts to make the story work. Make the story believable.