life

How to Write Man vs Technology Conflicts

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Technology shapes our lives perhaps more than any other force. Technology is what’s allowing you to hear this right now… unless you’re my neighbor who had a bunch of glass cups sitting near our shared wall that time I went to borrow some sugar. And even then, you could argue the glasses he uses to spy on me still counts as technology.

But what happens when that technology goes bad? What happens when that artificial intelligence makes our jobs obsolete? Or what happens when a government computer has an error that incorrectly labels you a sex offender, even though that other John Lazarus lives in the Denver area and John Lazarus isn’t even your real name and the swat team that comes after you doesn’t realize that authors often use pseudonyms?

Today’s video is the fifth installment in our six-part series about the main conflicts in fiction. So far we’ve looked at why self-loathing and fighting with service staff can be good for your writing, and why stranding your employees in the wilderness and sending threatening letters to city council members can backfire on you.

As I was saying, technology conflicts are relatable. Think of the last time your power went out. If it happens when my children are doing their visitation, not only do I dread having to entertain them and not screw up the pronunciation of their names, I also worry that the roving street gangs in my neighborhood will use this opportunity to break into my home and start looting.

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Tip One – Show the Pros and Cons of Your Technology

All technology exists for a good reason. Sometimes that’s a noble reason like curing polio or making the shareholders a lot of money. Sometimes it’s simple curiosity. But if your technology gone wrong seems only to exist to provide your characters with a challenge, the reader won’t buy it.

And our interactions with technology bring good and bad. I’ll never forget the first computer I ever had. It was a Hewlett Packard running Windows 95. It was the device on which I wrote my first published story and it was the device where I first met my first wife in an online chatroom. Well, not so much met as saw an advertisement for a strip club where I became her loyal patron.

But that same computer was also where I got catfished in AOL chatrooms by scammers looking for credit card numbers, and also by a group of local eighth graders who were just doing it for fun. Plus, that first published story actually lost me money and my first wife turned out to be a serial bigamist. So anyway, the cons should be pretty easy to think of.

Tip Two – Hold Up a Mirror to Society

Here’s a good writing prompt. Find a device in your house. And try to think about what it says about society. On my desk right now, I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones. That mostly says that people would rather live in their inner worlds that have to deal with the bullshit of strangers. It’s a symbol for how fragmented and isolated our society has become. I mean, nowadays, message boards and comment sections are just filled with bots who won’t even invite you to the forest behind the school to catfish you and then throw rocks and make rude comments about the dick picks you sent.

Sometimes you can start with a societal problem that persists today and then think of a technology that will highlight it. If you want to highlight societal problems with racism, how about your society has a machine that can tell if someone is black or not, and then forces them to get worse mortgages or something. If you want to highlight societal problems relating to income inequality, how about you write a story about an AI that distributes wealth evenly and the lazy lower classes get to sit on their ass and not even work for healthcare?

Tip Three – And Never Forget the Human Element

Like nature, technology on its own has no motive. What it can do in literature is highlight the underlying virtues and evils of our psyche. Without technology, my father would’ve just been a man who drank all the time and beat me a lot. But with technology, those “beatings” took on whole new psychological dimensions. For example, I remember one time he called me and disguised his voice using a voice modulator, and said kidnappers were holding him ransom. I pawned several of his things and brought the six thousand dollars to the dropoff only to find my father waiting in his Oldsmobile. He said it was a test and that he wanted to see if I would pawn my things or his to pay for the “ransom.” Since I had mostly pawned his possessions, he said I failed and also said he’d garnish my salary once I got a job in high school to pay him back. Anyway, try to think of ways people can use new technologies for the worse like this.

Yet your story can also be about how human virtue can overcome the dehumanizing effect of a technology. When a car breaks down in somewhere dangerous like the middle of a desert or a street in Louisiana, it’s often through the kindness of strangers that your characters make it out alive. Genetic engineering and cloning might seem to make the perfect humans, but your characters may realize there’s also grace in our flaws and in our ability to produce life through blasting raunchy rawdog loads.

Blood Shot: Chapter 4 (Traveling)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

My flight was uneventful. The twenty-two hours flew by in no time.
I slept well, enjoyed a few drinks and caught up on my reading. I
never really understood people’s problems with flying. Perhaps it was
because commercially I always flew ABL Air, an obscure airline
known for its passenger restrictions preventing the obese, infants,
Muslims and women from booking flights.


The in-flight entertainment was strippers and prostitutes, but I
put on my Sony noise-cancellation headphones and took a nap. I had
the feeling I’d get my fill with Fran soon enough.
Thoughts of past loves sprung forth as I drifted in and out of
sleep. I had loved three women in my life.


The first was a childhood romance, my next door neighbor Sally
Ription. We used to pick strawberries in her parent’s garden and
push each other on the tire swing in the local playground. We’d
spend cool summer nights catching fireflies in her front yard. We
were seventeen.


She was the first girl to take my virginity. Unfortunately, a few
months later while looking into her bedroom window from mine, I
saw her cheating on me with a boy who looked suspiciously like her
older brother. The next day it was a man who looked like our
postman. Another day, a guy with the same hairline as our high
school principal. After a week of this, I decided to end it.

My second love was Dakota Jean, the mother of my two
children. We had met during the early part of my NBA career. My
agent introduced her as a “woman who can really flush the stress of
this lifestyle right out of you.” We hit it off immediately. It was
always a roller coaster ride with her, peaks of ecstasy and nadirs of
despair. Our kids helped settle things down for a while, but
eventually our lifestyles became too incompatible. She seemed upset
every moment we spent together, perhaps because, for some reason,
she only had time off work when she was menstruating.
The third, well, was Jennifer. Was it over now? Was this flight
the final nail in the coffin? Maybe. But maybe things weren’t that
simple.


“Would you care for a beverage?” the flight attendant asked me.
Then, raising her eyebrows, “Or anything else?”
I’m not much of a drinker, but I asked for a shot of absinthe.
Carter’s drink. I needed something to numb me a little. I downed the
shot and shut my eyes again.


So, you may be asking, what of Fran Blauchamp? The woman I
was on my way to see.
With Fran, it was pure, unadulterated lust. There were no
romantic, candlelit dinners, though we did discover a few other uses
for candles during our time together, if you catch my drift. I, for
example, learned that if your aglet – the plastic tip of a shoelace – falls
off, you can replace it by dipping the end of the lace in hot candle
wax.


Fran was too much of an enigma to fall for. She built up this
hard, steely exterior, which probably explains why she was such a
successful TV chef. When we met, her career was just taking off at
the Food Network. But she mysteriously quit six years ago, and has
been something of a recluse ever since.
Now she was back.


The plane landed, gingerly navigating the heavy fog covering the
runway. The exhilaration of entering a foreign land began to set in. I
snatched my carry-on and rushed to beat the crowd. The flight
attendants made their way through the rows, wiping down all the
seats and windows.


I got in line and waited to pass immigration inspection. I have to
admit the whole process has always confused me. Words like
“naturalization” and “visa” and “queue” have never made any sense.
And isn’t “foreign-born” an oxymoron? I looked at the nearest visa

agent and tried to put on the charm, smiling and doing my best to
remember the little Chinese I’d learned:
The woman spit on the floor and wiped it with her feet.
I was afraid I’d offended her. But before I had time to reply,
another man walked up to me, official-looking but not uniformed
like the rest of the immigration staff.


“Please come with me,” the man said in excellent English.
I followed him into a small, windowless room. The room was
host to two junior visa officers and a small inspection table. It
seemed completely normal, aside from the chair I was asked to sit in
that had the seat bottom cut out of it. The men asked me to open my
carry-on. They rummaged through the contents: my clothes, a
laptop, Where Da Ass At 3 (Carter’s gift), the bird feathers I’d bought
for Fran, the dozens of packets of fruit and vegetable seeds. They
also made me empty my pockets.


“Close your eyes, please,” the head officer said.
“Why?”
“It would be best for everyone if you just follow along. Close
your eyes. And no peeking.”
I thought the whole thing was silly, but was in no mood to start
trouble. I closed my eyes. I then heard a sharp, metallic clicking.
“Okay, you can open your eyes now.”
“Can I go?”
“A few more questions, if you please.”
“Okay.”
“What brings you to Wuhan, Mr. Anderken?”
“What brings anyone?”
“Yes, the residents of Fuck Town take pride in their reputation.
Where do you plan on staying?” I showed him the address of the
hotel Fran had given me. He glanced over it quickly, not seeming to
pay it much mind.
“Are you staying alone?”


I explained about my situation with Fran. The two junior
officers paged through an unfinished manuscript of a novel I had
written. They raised their eyebrows and looked at me.
“What, athletes can’t be literary?” I said. It always annoyed me
when people looked at my 6’10” frame and sculpted thighs and
assumed intellectual endeavors were beyond my grasp. I had a
communications major from Ohio State, damnit!


“You’re that Kable Anderken?” the head officer said.
“And your name?” I asked.
“You can call me Michael Scofield.” The officers all shared a
laugh. They looked at me expectantly.
“I don’t… is that something I should know?”
“Prison Break. The main character. The most famous and best
American television show ever made.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Well, in any case, everything seems to be in order. We wish you
a pleasant stay.” Michael said something to the junior officers in
Chinese and walked out.


“Can we see your passport, Mr. Anderken?” one of the officers
said. I handed it over. I fidgeted in my bottomless chair, ready to
leave – it would’ve been worse had I not been used to sitting in a
similar one at Carter’s penthouse.


“Where’s your visa?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. I came here in a hurry. I didn’t have time
to get a visa. I’ll just do one here.”
“You can’t just do that. China doesn’t have on-arrival visa
processing.”


“Fine, then. I’ll just pay the fine or whatever. How much is it?”
The two visa agents looked at each other.
“Ten thousand US dollars?”
“Yeah, sure.” I grabbed the twenty grand I always keep in my
backpack and handed them ten each. And I was on my way.