Today we’re onto part 3 of The Wretched. This week is a little short but we’re reintroducing our desert prison planet Xanadu from the outside in.
Light speed travel; It’s called science fiction for a reason. The fiction is oftentimes the easy part, but using and building with realistic SCIENCE is the tricky part. There are a bunch of different ways light speed travel has been depicted, and for The Wretched I decided to go with these LST conduits. You punch in where you want to go, and it’ll connect you with the nearest conduit on that side of the galaxy and you’ll come out through there. Even now I’m still not sure if that’s the best or coolest way to do it, but I didn’t want them to get to our prison planet Xanadu in an instant. I guess that might not be light speed travel after all…
Our “mouthy prisoner” has more jokes, and more shadowy exposition.
In line with using and building realistic science, we’ve got a very specific operating number for our ship coming through light speed travel.
Dnai Avo takes a note from Django, “the D is silent.”
I remember writing this line, “imposing but dapper” for Augustus. I believe when I was writing the character of Augustus, our warden of Xanadu, he was a blend of The Walking Dead’s villain Negan and the KFC colonel. His dialogue is also heavily influenced by Negan, he uses a few less F-words but he is still vulgar and creative in his vulgarities too.
“Ask around about the revolt.” This feels like I’m lazily introducing something that’ll get mentioned later by somebody else. Also why would the warden mention it? Unless he’s confident that nobody could pull it off successful. A weak end to Augustus’s monologue.
So much sand. Funny enough, this is years before I read or watched any of the Dune books or movies.
My favorite line in these pages is about the prisoners showing up in their orange jumpsuits. “It’s a nice way of letting everyone know the new guys.” Damn.
Make note of all the defenses, and offenses, here at Dnai Avo port. That might be important later.
And a flaring, hot sun might be a nice clue as to what’s to come for Xanadu.
Out of everything so far, I’d go back and rewrite this part of the screenplay. I’m not thrilled with my science on the light speed travel, and also feel like Oliver should’ve made at least one “friend” on board. Somebody he could talk to so that we could learn a little more about him and what he’s going through mentally. Right now, he’s just a passenger watching everything happening. Not super exciting for our main protagonist. And while Augustus has an alright intro, I think it would’ve been more impactful if we actually met him in the flesh after they landed on Xanadu. And if he did more than just talk. He’s not really a threatening big bad if he’s just a talking head. DO SOMETHING. I’d go back and do a little reshuffling of events and things before we get to where we are at the end of these pages. Coming up on Tuesday, Oliver walks into a saloon.
::RC