Evolution of a Story
From Idea-Screenplay-Manuscript-Book
By
Frederick Fichman
I’m
going to tell you a story about Evolution. Not about single-cell aquatic
creatures evolving into human beings. No, this is a tale about how a single story
idea evolved and flourished. It grew into a screenplay optioned by a major
Hollywood studio to a print book
published by two major international publishing companies to eBooks published
and now available on Kindle, Nook, and the Apple iBookstore. In fact, that
single story idea turned into an anthology of all three books published as the
anthology volume, “The SETI Trilogy.”
Before
Carl Sagan and after Albert Einstein there was a generation of physicists who
changed life on earth as we know it. Phillip Morrison was one of those
physicists. He was one of the creators of the atomic bomb, working directly
under J. Robert Oppenheimer. In the back seat of a Dodge sedan, July 1945, he
was in the New Mexico desert carrying the nuclear core of the Trinity test
device to the test site of the world’s first nuclear detonation. He was a
leader in the Project Alberta pit crew in the South Pacific on Tinian Island as
that crew loaded the atomic bombs destined for history, targeted at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. After the war he became a voice for nuclear nonproliferation, he
published papers that established gamma ray astronomy, and he won numerous
accolades and recognition throughout his career.
He
eventually became a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With physicist Giuseppe Cocconi
he published an article in the serious academic British science journal,
“Nature”, titled, “Searching for Interstellar Communications.” It was the birth
of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
From
this work a worldwide search for alien radio signals in the electromagnetic
spectrum is currently underway. And from his work astronomers with the help of
radio and optical telescopes on the ground and in space have to-date discovered
well over a thousand candidate extraterrestrial planets.
As
a beginning screenplay writer, working in the corporate world at ABC-TV studios
in Hollywood, I read about his work in the mid-1980’s and came to the immediate
conclusion that somehow this electrifying search could be turned into a
fascinating dramatic fictional story for film.
I
developed a storyline, a set of characters, learned how to format and write a
screenplay…and I wrote the screenplay, “SETI.” Because of my knowledge of how
Hollywood worked I was able to get my screenplay in front of Producer Shel
Schrager who was flush with his success from the then recently released “The
Karate Kid.” I got an option for feature film development from Columbia Studios
and I did several re-writes per his notes and suggestions. Then suddenly,
Columbia Pictures gets sold, studio head David Putnam leaves and with him his
slate of films, including “SETI.”
Disappointed,
I still believed that the story and subject were solid. I was determined to
turn the screenplay into a novel. Working days, writing nights for six months
that is exactly what I did. The result, my manuscript, “SETI,” was published by
the ROC imprint of Penguin USA in the U.S. and Canada. It was then picked up by
Headline Press in London for the U.K. and Australia.
On
my initial trip to New York to meet my editor at ROC we discussed my work on
the manuscript for book number two in the SETI trilogy. I will never forget one
minor piece of info the editor was giving me while we were in the middle of an
intersection crossing some incredibly busy street in New York. He told me at
that moment in the publication cycle the initial first print of “SETI” was
selling better than Stephen King’s first printing of his book, “Carrie.” I stopped
cold in that busy intersection stunned at the astonishing news my first book
was selling better than Stephen King’s first book. I had to be dragged by the
editor to the sidewalk to avoid being run over. I thought this was it, I was on
my way.
Flash
forward, ROC culls its list of books and authors and I am on that list.
I
can’t tell you how exciting and exhilarating it is to see your book on the
bookshelf in a Covent Garden mammoth bookstore in London. Stacked neatly, ten copies
across. Your book. Your title. Your name. And to have it suddenly come to an
end for some inexplicable reason is the antipode, the exact opposite of that
feeling.
Book
number two, “SETI, The Journey, had been copy-edited and was ready for press at
Roc, Penguin USA. But now, the party was over.
I
retreated and never gave up on my story and my dream to finish my SETI trilogy.
Flash
forward again to the eBook revolution and thank the heavens above for Amazon
and Jeff Bezos. Kindle starts up and the eBook publishing world explodes. I
seized the opportunity and digitally published book number one, “SETI,” book
number two, “SETI, The Journey,” and book number three, “SETI, Conception” and
finally and recently an anthology of all three books into one volume, “The SETI
Trilogy.”
A
single idea, a single article from physicist Phillip Morrison set me on a long
journey to fulfill my dreams to become a published author, with many more books
as well. It also has made me remember and silently thank a boss I once had at
ABC-TV who heard of my fledgling writing career. He gave me a great piece of
advice I recall again and again to this day. He told me never hold onto a dream
so tightly that no one else can see it, share it and experience it. Be bold and
show it to the world.
I
thought about those words of wisdom over the years. Without them, my creation
of “The SETI Trilogy” would have never happened.
--Frederick Fichman is author of 25 books and can be found on Amazon
Kindle, BarnesandNoble Nook, KOBO and the Apple iBookstore.
www.frederickfichman.com.
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