Beware of using current technology in a story. The story gets outdated fast.
I wrote an almost-novel several years ago where the character used a pay phone. Young readers today won't even know what that was. I later rewrote it with cell phones.
But it had a car GPS in it. Those are near history now because phones incorporate that capability.
Any surveying equipment specifics will likewise date the story.
Bill93, post: 441387, member: 87 wrote: Beware of using current technology in a story. The story gets outdated fast.
I'm sure there must be an App somewhere that, with a few parameters, can write you a novel for any era.
imaudigger, post: 441375, member: 7286 wrote: Don, how is the fire & smoke down there? Have family moving down that way and I suggested that the national park might me less congested this year due to the fires...any suggestions?
You trying to research some content for a book? How about the surveyor was operating a drone while he was attacked and the drone crashed into the dense brush 1/4 mile away...could the evidence be laying around waiting for a hiker to discover the half melted remains after a forest fire?
Traffic to the park may be lessening a little because of schools opening soon, but the fires don't seem to deterred anyone. Traffic is still crazy through Groveland. No significant smoke at this time; the Detwiler is done.
I like the drone idea a lot!
Bill93, post: 441387, member: 87 wrote: Beware of using current technology in a story. The story gets outdated fast.
I wrote an almost-novel several years ago where the character used a pay phone. Young readers today won't even know what that was. I later rewrote it with cell phones.
But it had a car GPS in it. Those are near history now because phones incorporate that capability.
Any surveying equipment specifics will likewise date the story.
That was my thoughts also.
Robots have been around for decades.
Old tech.
A more contemporary slant would be UAV surveying.
Good to hear from you Don. I second going with the Drone idea.
If the surveyor was a Texan, he was likely murdered from a high powered rifle by the first shot, or the killer is likely dead nearby from the returned gunfire from the mortally wounded surveyor.
I like the drone idea.
I don't think it's a big deal dating your book. I've read some really terrible stories and dating it was the least of its problems. Terrible writing, dragging out situations that have no reason to be drawn out, and down right boring was the problem.
John Giles, post: 441451, member: 57 wrote: I like the drone idea.
I don't think it's a big deal dating your book. I've read some really terrible stories and dating it was the least of its problems. Terrible writing, dragging out situations that have no reason to be drawn out, and down right boring was the problem.
Agree! Dating will definitely be the least of my problems 🙂
Don
Great to hear from you Don!
I love the story premise.
Look into the new scanning robots.
Williwaw, post: 441356, member: 7066 wrote: The S6 has an optional camera called 'Vision', but the operator has to remotely trigger it to store an image.
I'd say if your victim was a Texan and found hanging from an 8' deer fence, your list of suspects might be extensive and an unfortunate accident difficult to disprove.
Ah, the key to a novel is right there. The remote operator did indeed trigger a photo, unknown to the perp. Months later a crew member notices the stored photo and...
Bruce Small, post: 441502, member: 1201 wrote: Ah, the key to a novel is right there. The remote operator did indeed trigger a photo, unknown to the perp. Months later a crew member notices the stored photo and...
...the S6 had latched onto the perpetrator's number plate, not the prism...
Don Blameuser, post: 441332, member: 30 wrote: All responses welcome; even snide remarks could find their way into my story (did I mention that I'm retired?)
What happened you old fart? Get kicked out of the shuffleboard club? (again) 😉
FL/GA PLS., post: 441537, member: 379 wrote: What happened you old fart? Get kicked out of the shuffleboard club? (again) 😉
Probably for talking politics too much. They hate that at shuffleboard clubs.
Maybe on the way to a project, the surveyor received a call from a guy wanting a section line marked for logging purposes. He swings by to do some recon. He hikes into a remote canyon to look for a section corner and gets stuck in a dense brush field. He decides to launch the drone to try and find a way out.
On his navigation display, he sees a small clearing with heavy green vegetation and thinks maybe there is a spring nearby. With the drone providing aerial footage, he crawls on his hands and knees until he pops out into the middle of a large dope plantation with a half dozen (insert your description here) sleeping in the shade of a large pine tree. They all quickly jump to their feet. One appears to be in charge and is holding an AK-47. There is a minor scuffle and the drone loses communication with the controller and automatically flies back to where it was launched and lands. This happens to be at the search location for the section corner. The surveyor is held hostage for several days while they finish harvesting.Then he is shot and buried in a shallow grave, not 500 feet from the corner he was looking for.
The drug cartel starts a forest fire in an attempt to eliminate the crime scene and steals his work truck.
CalFire deems the cause of the fire to be suspicous - likely human caused. Nothing ever becomes of it. The family spends months looking in the wrong location and the disappearance is never solved...............Another surveyor will have to find the drone while tying the corner.....maybe they toss it down the bank thinking it was junk.....maybe more time goes by and the landowner gets his invoice for the project...he calls up and complains...saying the first surveyor had quoted a lower price and that it would have been way cheaper if he had used a drone like the first surveyor was going to do....suddenly things start to come together and the search is on for the melted drone.
Have you looked into some of the different grammar programs out there?
I've found they are a great help when writing. No matter how careful you are or how many times you read and edit your draft, there will be things you miss. I used to use 'Ginger' but found it failed in comparison to 'Grammarly' at catching mistakes you make. And Grammarly is free but also offers a premium version. It works inside Microsoft Word as an add-on. There are other grammar programs out there but those are the two I have used and compared. If you have it from the start it will save a lot of editing later. I am still going through a 118,000-word book I wrote. It's tedious work and I wish I had Grammarly from the start. It would have saved me a lot of time it's taking now to run the book through the program. So many simple mistakes made by me were found with the program.
imaudigger, post: 441555, member: 7286 wrote: Maybe on the way to a project, the surveyor received a call from a guy wanting a section line marked for logging purposes. He swings by to do some recon. He hikes into a remote canyon to look for a section corner and gets stuck in a dense brush field. He decides to launch the drone to try and find a way out.
On his navigation display, he sees a small clearing with heavy green vegetation and thinks maybe there is a spring nearby. With the drone providing aerial footage, he crawls on his hands and knees until he pops out into the middle of a large dope plantation with a half dozen (insert your description here) sleeping in the shade of a large pine tree. They all quickly jump to their feet. One appears to be in charge and is holding an AK-47. There is a minor scuffle and the drone loses communication with the controller and automatically flies back to where it was launched and lands. This happens to be at the search location for the section corner. The surveyor is held hostage for several days while they finish harvesting.Then he is shot and buried in a shallow grave, not 500 feet from the corner he was looking for.
The drug cartel starts a forest fire in an attempt to eliminate the crime scene and steals his work truck.
CalFire deems the cause of the fire to be suspicous - likely human caused. Nothing ever becomes of it. The family spends months looking in the wrong location and the disappearance is never solved...............Another surveyor will have to find the drone while tying the corner.....maybe they toss it down the bank thinking it was junk.....maybe more time goes by and the landowner gets his invoice for the project...he calls up and complains...saying the first surveyor had quoted a lower price and that it would have been way cheaper if he had used a drone like the first surveyor was going to do....suddenly things start to come together and the search is on for the melted drone.
Interesting scenario, Digger, but where my idea is heading is to a development cartel (including local agency and elected governmental officials) trying to conceal a cultural resource that their preliminary surveyor stumbles onto which will scuttle their obscenely profitable scheme. That's why the surveyor has to die if he can't be bought. Which he can't, of course.
It's a mystery set in the bureaucratic world I just retired from and features many of the actors that live there stillI. I love them all and will disguise their names. Many of them will play parts that they never would in real life. It's fun.
Don
I put some links to writer's tools in the education section of a recent newsletter for our local critique group.
http://noblepencr.org/?p=3189
Don Blameuser, post: 441332, member: 30 wrote: and his robot, half a mile away, witnessed the whole thing.
This is a question from a retired guy (pleased to be, I must say) who never really got much more technologically advanced than the twenty second transit. With all the science fiction-like equipment available today, is it possible that that the discovery of an isolated, battery-discharged robot could yield clues to the commission of the crime?
Sure, I heard a scenario just the other day that would fit perfectly. I won't give that plot away, but the key to the scenario would be that a data collector would contain the sequence of the points that the victim visited, with time stamps on each. Reconstructing the events would consist of retracing the sequence (checking field coding against what is there, until the last point which has a mysterious field code like "FD.CNTR.SECTN" and nothing in place but some blood spatter where the crime actually occured.
It will all turn out to be the work of another surveyor who had made extensive surveys on the theory that the center of the section was in one specific position and saw his life's work hanging in tatters in the face of the contrary. There would be plot twists implicating the County GIS manager, the County Surveyor, several landowners. and all readers of an internet discussion forum.
Some of the postings of the internet discussion forum would implicate various posters in locations well away from the murder scene, but it would turn out that one highly impressionable reader who aspired to be a surveyor - and was in the meantime a member of a cargo cult based in California - took it all in at face value and did what he thought had to be done by hacking into a security system on an adjacent property with a remotely controlled high-powered Wayne LaPierre Special Edition rifle with noise surpressor.
The victim is found in another location than where it turns out the murder actually occurred, and with a Topcon data collector in his hand arranged to make it appear to have been a suicide. However, when that data is downloaded, the forensic analyst determines that it is from some other completely different site with date stamps earlier in the week. A careful search of the vicinity turns up the actual data collector, smashed to pieces, but with an intact memory card that contains the data.
