If events in Washington were fictional (sometimes we all wish they were), and we were all part of some screenplay, the first thing a good editor would tell us is to rewrite the whole damn thing, starting with the names. The conversation might run something like this...
Now you've got to change the names here. You can't have a president who has the middle name Hussein and use that name for your villain in Iraq. And what are the odds that his last name - Obama - shares every letter but one with the other bad guy's first name - Osama? It's weird.
You're already asking the reader to buy the idea that Americans would vote for a black man after a century of owning them and another century fighting like hell to keep them from voting. IF that would ever happen, you've got to make it believable, starting with the name. Only in a novel would more Americans vote for a guy with a name like Barack Hussein Obama than for any presidential candidate ever. Right.
And it just doesn't seem plausible that this pointy-headed academic Constitutional law professor named Obama would nail Osama in only 2 years when his predecessor - the one with the custom-made flight suit and the Mission Accomplished banner who kept falling off the bike - couldn't do it in 8. Why build this Bush character up to be a man's man, a brush-clearing, smoke-'em-out, dead-or-alive sort of tough guy only to make him look so ineffective by comparison?
But that's just the beginning. Who is this guy Boehner. Really? Don't tell me how it's SUPPOSED to be pronounced; readers are going to pronounce it as they see it and they will think of what it sounds like. And this after an administration run by two guys named Dick and Bush? Right.
Then you have these shadowy billionaires financing the Tea Party and you just had to call them Koch... no, no, stop telling me how it's SUPPOSED to be pronounced; no reader will look at that name and think of COKE. And he has to start a party of mostly white guys running around getting all excited and calling each other tea-baggers? You've managed to take an explicit gay sexual act and turn it into something disgusting.
And what's the name of this minor character from the Dick and Bush era who gets convicted of obstruction of justice but pardoned by the guy he lied for? Scooter? You're pulling my leg, right? I have never met an adult named Scooter. I don't care if it's a nickname, it's weird. Next you'll be saying there's a Newt in there...
Oh, you've got to be kidding me! And this Newt fellow goes after a president for adultery in Act 1, Scene 1, impeaches the guy, but we learn in Act 2 that Newt was committing adultery during the impeachment process?
And at the end of the book, the guy he went after is more popular than god, touring the world wiping out hunger with a rock star named... Bono; and this same rock star was giving advice to a Republican Treasury secretary about alleviating poverty in Africa and this Republican guy listened? C'mon. It's just not believable.
OK, so Newt gets voted out of office, but makes a come back after writing a series of books on Saving America from - is this right? - a "Right Wing Secular Liberal Machine"? Those are really his words? So he's not just a hypocrite, but a nut job. Readers will feel insulted, especially Republican readers. The Party of Lincoln, even in a novel, would not stoop that low. You have to make him likable at some level.
And you' can't have a bad guy who made off with everyone's money named Madoff, and if you do, you can't have it pronounced that way. It's just way too heavy-handed. And if you're going to have another bad guy caught up in another massive scandal, do you have to call him Abramoff. What is this, Dr. Seuss?
And this Palin lady - at least her name doesn't sound like a body part - but you're seriously going to have her quit halfway through her term in Alaska, sign a multi-million dollar book deal, then claim to be a moose-hunting hockey mom? She can't have her employer build a sophisticated sound studio in the basement of her house then claim that the "lamestream media" is trying to shut her up because she is conservative. And lose the "lamestream" part - there is no way a woman with a disabled child would use a word like "lame" in that way. If we want to like her, she has to have some sensitivity or compassion.
It's way too ironic having her teenage daughter get pregnant after she advocated abstinence-only education while governor of Alaska. It's like you're making fun of these guys. Do you think the Republicans would be so dumb as to run her if they knew what a mess her family was. And no kids - none - are ever REALLY called Track, Trig, Willow, or Piper. Bristol, fine, that's cute, but then you get her knocked up.
And this Birther subplot sounds bizarre. Why are all these Tea Party guys so convinced the president, the first African American president, is really only African? And everyone who obsesses over this mysterious birth certificate that you tell the reader in Chapter Three was never in doubt and in fact had been released just happens to be white? Come on. Readers do not like racist characters, even crafty villain types and these guys aren't even crafty.
Readers are going to lose patience with these guys. I know I did. Move on already.
And you can't have these Republicans threatening to go after Medicare, Social Security, Head Start, healthcare for poor children - poor children! - AND help for 9-11 volunteers. We're talking VOLUNTEERS! On 9-11! People would be on the streets if this really happened. And why? You're trying to make the case that this party is smart but crafty, but here they just seem dumb, trying to plug a trillion dollar hole with a few pennies.
I like this Rose character who goes into women's healthcare clinics with a hidden camera to nail workers saying stupid things; you have the beginnings of a likable anti-hero, a single issue woman out to single handedly take on this evil organization, but there has to be more. The organization has to be evil, or she just looks like another nut. You can't have her going after a group that mostly provides cancer screening and medical care to poor women and girls. Again, it sounds mean-spirited. Why not have her infiltrate a hedge fund or oil company?
You have all these random characters running around with their pet issues and none of them make any sense at the end of the day. But you could work with her. I would make her a former porn star or stripper, someone who maybe felt pressured to have an abortion when she was working her way through college, doing tricks on the side, that sort of thing. Gets real mad, maybe work in a feminist angle. Abortion as the subjugation of women or something. It would be unexpected, counter-stereotypical, and might just work.
But she has to really find a real scandal, otherwise she just looks like another nutty character pursuing her pet issue. How about something along the lines of higher ups in this evil organization selling fetal body parts on ebay to a diabolical Chinese manufacturer of puppy dog chow? Now THAT would be a scandal. This stuff about a bonehead employee counseling fake pimps about dodging reporting requirements does nothing for me. It's not the sort of stuff Republican lawmakers would present as evidence on the floor of Congress.
And lose this white loser side kick who dresses up as the world's most unconvincing pimp and goes after all these black organizations like Acorn and what not. He's too overtly racist, too much of a scumbag. I'm telling you, most readers are going to feel that you're mocking them and some do care about these issues.
That Trump character - Trump is the best you could do? - comes across as an evil megalomaniac with an obsession for birth certificates everyone in the book has seen but him. How can a guy have a helicopter but not an internet connection? He looks thoroughly moronic sending his "people" off to Hawaii to look for a birth certificate while the president is busy producing Osama's death certificate. Readers don't like stupid characters, even villains. And all this stuff about his hair is gratuitous. Give him some off-setting virtue, maybe make him a really good juggler or something.
And I guess that's my biggest problem with the book: why do all these white people think this Obama guy is so bad? You've got to make the economy heading toward a depression, not on the mend. The stock market should be crashing, not double what it was 2 months after he took office. If he lowered taxes for the very rich and everyone else, but they keep calling him a socialist, after awhile these white guys just look angry and kind of dumb. It makes no sense.
Where's the catastrophe? Where is the deep, dark secret that he is desperately trying to hide? Look, if you want to make this guy into a disaster, bring some of that bad stuff the Bush and Dick people did, like have Obama be the one deregulate the financial industry, watch it blow up as a result, then turn around and hit up the tax payers for $700 billion to fix his mess. Can't you move this Hurricane Katrina - the only name I like in the book - to Obama's watch? Having all these poor black people abandoned by a black president would be a twist; having a rich white guy do it is a stereotype. Too much.
I like the oil spill, thought you were going somewhere with that, but it sort of made all those Republicans chanting "Drill, baby, drill!" or whatever sound massively discredited. Again. C'mon, they have to do something right.
Have Bush and Dick find something in Iraq, some suspicious powder, a suicide goat stuffed with plutonium, a diabolical anthrax lab. They can't go charging in and find nothing; hell, at least have them plant something.
You can't have all this bad stuff happening on his predecessor's watch, then have him look so good by comparison.
And I've got problems with these other names.
Like Huckabee. Why not just call him Aw-Shucks-abee? When I hear Huckabee, I think of a barefoot guy on a raft drifting down the Mississippi River with a straw hat and a runaway slave. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not very presidential.
Mitt Romney - is a name maybe we can work with but why not give him a real name like Mitchel or Michael or something. Mitt is something you use in baseball to catch balls. And frankly, we don't need any images that can be worked into a crude joke, even indirectly.
And you can't have Mitt running against his own healthcare reform plan. It's just too sloppy, too ironic, plot-wise.
I guess you have to ask if you're writing farce or fiction. If it's fiction, it's got to be believable. Even a farce has to give the Mitts and Newts and Kochs and Boehners some redeeming qualities, starting with their names. You can't have all these angry white guys with bad names reflexively hating the first African American president for the flimsiest and weirdest of reasons. There is no way the press in a free country would let them get away with that sort of crap. No one would ever believe it.
Now you've got to change the names here. You can't have a president who has the middle name Hussein and use that name for your villain in Iraq. And what are the odds that his last name - Obama - shares every letter but one with the other bad guy's first name - Osama? It's weird.
You're already asking the reader to buy the idea that Americans would vote for a black man after a century of owning them and another century fighting like hell to keep them from voting. IF that would ever happen, you've got to make it believable, starting with the name. Only in a novel would more Americans vote for a guy with a name like Barack Hussein Obama than for any presidential candidate ever. Right.
And it just doesn't seem plausible that this pointy-headed academic Constitutional law professor named Obama would nail Osama in only 2 years when his predecessor - the one with the custom-made flight suit and the Mission Accomplished banner who kept falling off the bike - couldn't do it in 8. Why build this Bush character up to be a man's man, a brush-clearing, smoke-'em-out, dead-or-alive sort of tough guy only to make him look so ineffective by comparison?
But that's just the beginning. Who is this guy Boehner. Really? Don't tell me how it's SUPPOSED to be pronounced; readers are going to pronounce it as they see it and they will think of what it sounds like. And this after an administration run by two guys named Dick and Bush? Right.
Then you have these shadowy billionaires financing the Tea Party and you just had to call them Koch... no, no, stop telling me how it's SUPPOSED to be pronounced; no reader will look at that name and think of COKE. And he has to start a party of mostly white guys running around getting all excited and calling each other tea-baggers? You've managed to take an explicit gay sexual act and turn it into something disgusting.
And what's the name of this minor character from the Dick and Bush era who gets convicted of obstruction of justice but pardoned by the guy he lied for? Scooter? You're pulling my leg, right? I have never met an adult named Scooter. I don't care if it's a nickname, it's weird. Next you'll be saying there's a Newt in there...
Oh, you've got to be kidding me! And this Newt fellow goes after a president for adultery in Act 1, Scene 1, impeaches the guy, but we learn in Act 2 that Newt was committing adultery during the impeachment process?
And at the end of the book, the guy he went after is more popular than god, touring the world wiping out hunger with a rock star named... Bono; and this same rock star was giving advice to a Republican Treasury secretary about alleviating poverty in Africa and this Republican guy listened? C'mon. It's just not believable.
OK, so Newt gets voted out of office, but makes a come back after writing a series of books on Saving America from - is this right? - a "Right Wing Secular Liberal Machine"? Those are really his words? So he's not just a hypocrite, but a nut job. Readers will feel insulted, especially Republican readers. The Party of Lincoln, even in a novel, would not stoop that low. You have to make him likable at some level.
And you' can't have a bad guy who made off with everyone's money named Madoff, and if you do, you can't have it pronounced that way. It's just way too heavy-handed. And if you're going to have another bad guy caught up in another massive scandal, do you have to call him Abramoff. What is this, Dr. Seuss?
And this Palin lady - at least her name doesn't sound like a body part - but you're seriously going to have her quit halfway through her term in Alaska, sign a multi-million dollar book deal, then claim to be a moose-hunting hockey mom? She can't have her employer build a sophisticated sound studio in the basement of her house then claim that the "lamestream media" is trying to shut her up because she is conservative. And lose the "lamestream" part - there is no way a woman with a disabled child would use a word like "lame" in that way. If we want to like her, she has to have some sensitivity or compassion.
It's way too ironic having her teenage daughter get pregnant after she advocated abstinence-only education while governor of Alaska. It's like you're making fun of these guys. Do you think the Republicans would be so dumb as to run her if they knew what a mess her family was. And no kids - none - are ever REALLY called Track, Trig, Willow, or Piper. Bristol, fine, that's cute, but then you get her knocked up.
You just can't make her so dumb. What person with a pulse, much less one who wants to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, couldn't name a single supreme court decision or newspaper she reads, or thinks Africa is a country? If you're going to have her talk about death panels why immediately alert the reader to the fact that they don't exist? It kills the plot; once again we have a bunch of crazy people talking about things that they should know aren't real and why?
Why not tease the reader along, or write some actual death panels into the plot. This Obama fellow seems a bit too perfect, too polished, too likable. If he had some sort of dark secret, this could be it. But then you have to ask why he would be so stupid as to sneak something into a bill that he himself is signing, not writing.
Oh, and don't have Palin put cross hairs over a likable Congresswoman whose husband is an ASTRONAUT no less (who just happens to have an identical astronaut twin (right!) who is in charge of the space station) then have this lady get shot. It's too ironic and heavy-handed. If you do carry out this ridiculous subplot, at least give Palin some capacity for introspection or remorse. She can't go comparing herself to victims of the Holocaust or pogroms against Jews. She sounds not just dumb and irony-challenged, but whiny. I don't like her and I'll bet most readers won't either. At least most readers have to be given some reason as to why intelligent voters would ever find such a person appealing.
And if you're going to have an Axis of Evil introduced in Chapter 2, follow up. You can't have one country invaded and the other two sort of fizzle out. I like that phrase, by the way, it's got a nice zing to it, but do two of the countries have to share 3 out of 4 letters - you're asking a lot of American readers not to confuse Iraq and Iran. Why not fictionalize one, call it Iraqistan or something, or make the other one Canada?
And this Birther subplot sounds bizarre. Why are all these Tea Party guys so convinced the president, the first African American president, is really only African? And everyone who obsesses over this mysterious birth certificate that you tell the reader in Chapter Three was never in doubt and in fact had been released just happens to be white? Come on. Readers do not like racist characters, even crafty villain types and these guys aren't even crafty.
Readers are going to lose patience with these guys. I know I did. Move on already.
And you can't have these Republicans threatening to go after Medicare, Social Security, Head Start, healthcare for poor children - poor children! - AND help for 9-11 volunteers. We're talking VOLUNTEERS! On 9-11! People would be on the streets if this really happened. And why? You're trying to make the case that this party is smart but crafty, but here they just seem dumb, trying to plug a trillion dollar hole with a few pennies.
I like this Rose character who goes into women's healthcare clinics with a hidden camera to nail workers saying stupid things; you have the beginnings of a likable anti-hero, a single issue woman out to single handedly take on this evil organization, but there has to be more. The organization has to be evil, or she just looks like another nut. You can't have her going after a group that mostly provides cancer screening and medical care to poor women and girls. Again, it sounds mean-spirited. Why not have her infiltrate a hedge fund or oil company?
You have all these random characters running around with their pet issues and none of them make any sense at the end of the day. But you could work with her. I would make her a former porn star or stripper, someone who maybe felt pressured to have an abortion when she was working her way through college, doing tricks on the side, that sort of thing. Gets real mad, maybe work in a feminist angle. Abortion as the subjugation of women or something. It would be unexpected, counter-stereotypical, and might just work.
But she has to really find a real scandal, otherwise she just looks like another nutty character pursuing her pet issue. How about something along the lines of higher ups in this evil organization selling fetal body parts on ebay to a diabolical Chinese manufacturer of puppy dog chow? Now THAT would be a scandal. This stuff about a bonehead employee counseling fake pimps about dodging reporting requirements does nothing for me. It's not the sort of stuff Republican lawmakers would present as evidence on the floor of Congress.
And lose this white loser side kick who dresses up as the world's most unconvincing pimp and goes after all these black organizations like Acorn and what not. He's too overtly racist, too much of a scumbag. I'm telling you, most readers are going to feel that you're mocking them and some do care about these issues.
That Trump character - Trump is the best you could do? - comes across as an evil megalomaniac with an obsession for birth certificates everyone in the book has seen but him. How can a guy have a helicopter but not an internet connection? He looks thoroughly moronic sending his "people" off to Hawaii to look for a birth certificate while the president is busy producing Osama's death certificate. Readers don't like stupid characters, even villains. And all this stuff about his hair is gratuitous. Give him some off-setting virtue, maybe make him a really good juggler or something.
And I guess that's my biggest problem with the book: why do all these white people think this Obama guy is so bad? You've got to make the economy heading toward a depression, not on the mend. The stock market should be crashing, not double what it was 2 months after he took office. If he lowered taxes for the very rich and everyone else, but they keep calling him a socialist, after awhile these white guys just look angry and kind of dumb. It makes no sense.
Where's the catastrophe? Where is the deep, dark secret that he is desperately trying to hide? Look, if you want to make this guy into a disaster, bring some of that bad stuff the Bush and Dick people did, like have Obama be the one deregulate the financial industry, watch it blow up as a result, then turn around and hit up the tax payers for $700 billion to fix his mess. Can't you move this Hurricane Katrina - the only name I like in the book - to Obama's watch? Having all these poor black people abandoned by a black president would be a twist; having a rich white guy do it is a stereotype. Too much.
I like the oil spill, thought you were going somewhere with that, but it sort of made all those Republicans chanting "Drill, baby, drill!" or whatever sound massively discredited. Again. C'mon, they have to do something right.
Have Bush and Dick find something in Iraq, some suspicious powder, a suicide goat stuffed with plutonium, a diabolical anthrax lab. They can't go charging in and find nothing; hell, at least have them plant something.
You can't have all this bad stuff happening on his predecessor's watch, then have him look so good by comparison.
And I've got problems with these other names.
Like Huckabee. Why not just call him Aw-Shucks-abee? When I hear Huckabee, I think of a barefoot guy on a raft drifting down the Mississippi River with a straw hat and a runaway slave. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not very presidential.
Mitt Romney - is a name maybe we can work with but why not give him a real name like Mitchel or Michael or something. Mitt is something you use in baseball to catch balls. And frankly, we don't need any images that can be worked into a crude joke, even indirectly.
And you can't have Mitt running against his own healthcare reform plan. It's just too sloppy, too ironic, plot-wise.
I guess you have to ask if you're writing farce or fiction. If it's fiction, it's got to be believable. Even a farce has to give the Mitts and Newts and Kochs and Boehners some redeeming qualities, starting with their names. You can't have all these angry white guys with bad names reflexively hating the first African American president for the flimsiest and weirdest of reasons. There is no way the press in a free country would let them get away with that sort of crap. No one would ever believe it.
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