posted
Television and news are very embedded in our modern culture. So it is inevitable that we need to put it in our fiction. But reading a story about people watching TV does not a good story make.
Here I'm playing with a snippet, this is near the end of the chapter. The viewpoint character cuts the news on in the middle of a report. -------------------------------------------------- “...now we go to our correspondent on location,” the anchor said. The scene switched to a view of tall white hourglass structures. The caption on the bottom of the screen read: Brunsbuettel Nuclear Power Station. “Much of Northern Germany is out of power,” a voice reported. “The details are sketchy but it appears that an unknown group of assailants attacked the Brunsbuettel facility during the night. There are no survivors. One source has revealed that vast quantities of plutonium are missing, though authorities refuse to comment.” “This can’t be good,” Jay said. For a child his age, I thought it was a rather insightful comment. -------------------------------------------------- Bam. End of chapter. Though the viewpoint character does not know it now, his paths will intersect with the 'assailants'.
I would change, "..structures. The caption on the bottom of the screen read: Brunsbuettel Nuclear Power Station." That's a bit long, consider something like "..structures identifed by a caption: Brunsbuettel Nuclear Power Station." This tightens the writing and communicateds that the view of the power station and the caption are all part of the same picture.
Also, "vast quantities of plutonium" is stretching it a bit. I'd say "a large quantity" rather than "vast quantities", simply because vast quantities of plutonium do not exist on Earth.
One general comment, if this news engages the viewpoint character's interest, then it is possible to give more details, interspersed with the POV's thoughts and concerns. This seemed effective as a sort of "toothbrush sticking out of the mouth" scene, but I don't know if that's your intent (though it probably is).
posted
I don't necessarily have a problem with someone watching TV in a novel, but it has to be done very well in order to be believable.
First of all, what are the odds of someone switching on the TV or changing channels EXACTLY at the convenient moment? It would work better, IMO, if you cut in mid-sentence, mid-report, and your character had to listen for a while to grasp what was being said.
I remember the morning of 9/11. I switched on the news right in the middle of it. Mid-sentence, mid-report. I saw the top of the first tower smoking and I had to watch for a good 3 or 4 minutes before it finally became clear what was being reported. Still no one knew the full extent of just what had happened. The second tower still had not been hit. The reports of a plane striking the first were still speculative. I think for an on-the-spot news report your reporter knows too much. In the midst of chaos it takes time for such details to come out. I would think they would not necessarily know how it happened, but they'd be more worried about the possible consequences posed by a malfunctioning or unmanned power plant. That's one HELL of a lot scarier than the thought of some weirdos walking around with the grade of plutonium used in producing power--a whole different animal, as I understand, than the grade needed to produce nuclear weapons.
posted
<First of all, what are the odds of someone switching on the TV or changing channels EXACTLY at the convenient moment?>
Your exactly right. I had hoped that it seemed like he came in midsentence, but I guess I got too lazy.
<I remember the morning of 9/11.> Probably more than any other news event, we watched every angle over and over again. I remember they wheeled the TV into a conference room at work and we sat around stunned.
posted
Instead of having the T.V. turn on at the percise moment, why not have it on already, but your POV character not really paying attention. Then something the anchor says catches his (or her)ear and they turn around to watch the segment on the power outages.
I also question the plutonium, unless the power plant was actually a front for a weapons cache or something.
Perhaps the plutonium story is the second story the POV catches. When he turns on the T.V. pictures (technically a V.O. - Voice over - where the anchor talks while the footage plays) come up of riots, fires burning the streets, looting, etc. with riot police trying to subdue the crowd.
Blah, blah, blah, [a shot of the anchor comes up]. Blah-blah, we now take you to So-and-so at the Brunsbuettel Nuclear Power Station...
Within the context of the story, different elements can be put through a Transformation process, and becomes a higher state of matter with unusual unheard of properties. For the first time plutonium is put through the process it is fashioned into a weapon of unimaginable proportions.
Of course, the genre is a modern fantasy or 'science fanstasy'.
posted
Uh...plutonium is normally produced by "breeder" reactors, in fact, that is really the only way that it is produced in any quantity. So much of the world's supply of plutonium is going to be hanging around in storage at such facilities at any given time.
I thought it was common knowledge that "any type" of plutonium can be used to make fissionable cores, the most important component of any atomic/nuclear weapon (I also thought it was common knowledge that most plutonium is produced by breeder reactors, which are also used to generate power).
As for the news, I take it that he's turning on the morning news (which was part of the reason I interpreted it as a "toothbrush sticking out of his mouth" scene). The news of that morning is almost entirely devoted to the reports of someone breaking into a reactor and stealing a significant quantity of plutonium ("significant" here means anything more than 10 kg of the stuff, or just enough to make a single core if you have the right technology) the night before.
When I turned on my TV on 9-11, pictures of the towers burning was the first thing I saw. Major news events are like that, and somebody attacking a nuclear reactor and making off with some plutonium would be a major news event.
posted
In this age of 24/7 news channels, it's perfectly likely that such a breaking news event would be in coverage. It is artistic license and editing to begin quoting the news anchor only at a relevant point, or the reader will get bored. The suggestion of having the TV on already and beginning the achor's quote with elipses will do the trick.
I saw on the news this morning that people were upset that CSI got interrupted by news of Arafat's death. The producer that did it got fired. Can you imagine? Just when I thought my fellow Americans could not get any more stupid...
posted
Yeah, but Arafat's death was hardly "breaking news", since he'd been dead for a week already. And CSI is a crime drama, after all. The last few minutes of the show are where the mystery gets solved.
Now, if CSI had been interrupted to inform us that terrorists had just stolen a bunch of plutonium from a German nuclear plant, I doubt that anyone would have been fired over it.
Really, nobody would have been fired this time either, but that particular network has been having some major problems in the "newsworthy" decision making process lately.
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