 Let's start. Claudia, it's you and you're most welcome here on stage again because you did on the show 2017 you did a writing workshop for Nerds, didn't you? Here today? Yeah, there you are. Yes, here I am. So you've been here before, you know what it is about nerds and writing, and you write yourself as well. It's novels, I would call that krimis, or is that not? Crime novels, yes. Crime novels, yeah, crime novels, which are probably mostly fiction, but you also wrote a non-fiction book on how to be saved on the internet. So you're really involved in both fiction and in fact. So for today, I think it's an international saying, truth is stranger than fiction. We have the same in Dutch, and I tend to turn that around. Fiction is stranger than truth. So no, what is it? Truth is stranger than fiction. Nah, I was going for the other one, not the truth is stranger than fiction. And currently is. Yeah, but I was going actually for the other saying. How was it? It's too good to be true. And now it's too true to be good. Yeah, it's too true to be good. So we live in a very strange world. So what can a storyteller writer do about that, especially in the sense of science fiction and dystopian nonsense that we're going to have here, starting now. Claudia, all yours. Thank you. Hello. Yes. Thank you for the lovely introduction. My name is Claudia or Jinx. And yeah, I'm an author. I'm a podcast host. I do stuff with data security. And I'm a former project manager in web development for several years. So I know a bit of the technical stuff. And yeah, the big question we have today is what's an author actually doing? This is what most nerdy people ask themselves. Actually, I'm asking that myself too, most of the time. And as my lovely Harold, whose name I've just forgotten, Eric. Hi, Eric. As Eric just said, the big question is how do we write stories today when the outside is getting so strange? It's already like a dystopia that what we're living in, how can we create novels? How can we create movies? How can we create stories that still get people's attention that can be loved by people when the reality world is already kind of a dystopian story? The thing is, we will be doing a bit of storytelling ourselves here today. So you are going to develop a story together with me. I will tell you how. And the other thing is, the other lovely Harold, who's not called Eric. What was your name again? Milton. Thank you. Milton is going around with a microphone. And you are encouraged and I beg you to help me or help us all to create a story together. Okay? So you're prepared to interact with the story we're creating here. But a bit of things first. Why do we tell stories? Any idea? Teaching? To convey meaningful points? Yes. Any other ideas? To share concepts? To share concepts? Entertainment? Yes. Yes. Love different lives in a book or a movie or a theater piece or whatever. Yes. And we're doing that for forever. So we've, as humans, humans have always told stories from the very beginning. And there are those signings on walls that are basically stories too. How did our tribe get the mammoth? And so on. So those are very early stories that have been told throughout the times. It's a basic human thing, like talking, like having some kind of religious concept or life concept. And stories are one of those concepts we as human beings have. Today, telling stories today is a quite interesting thing because we do not only mirror what's happening in society in our books and movies and so on, but we contribute to the overall discussion. We change what's happening in society. We bring up the concepts and the ideas. One of you said that earlier, bringing up concepts and ideas into the overall discussion of our society. And we decide in books which topics are relevant. So even smaller authors, authors with not such a big influence like Andreas Eschbach also, who has millions of readers, but also small authors like me with a few hundred or a few thousand readers, we do have an influence on how and what is discussed in our society. So if we reach 30 people, then we have 30 people who get our ideas in their heads. And we're really close to people with our texts and our books and our stories in the hands of our readers. And if we reach 300 people and 300 people go out and talk about those topics, then we've reached at least 300, 600 and so on people. And even more if we're getting more attention our books are being sold more and so on. The thing is it's not only relevant for us as authors, but it's relevant for like everyone. So what are the topics of our society today? Ideas? Crime? Health? Global threats? Yes, of course. IT security? To mention? Nah, not that important, yeah. Disciples, yeah. AI? It's a topic, yes. Other ideas over there probably, maybe? Question is why didn't we as a society did not remember as a whole that there was a flu pandemic in 1921 and everyone was wearing masks? Why? Any idea? Yeah. No one wrote a good story. No one wrote a good story, right? Or a story at all. Actually I don't know any story about the flu pandemic as a novel or such. I know there's one or two non-fiction books on it, but we as a society forgot about it. We just forgot it. It's just 100 years old and we just forgot it. How could that happen? Because the discussion wasn't there in society. It wasn't a topic. It's what happens right now with the publishing industry. Publishers say no, no, we don't take books on the pandemic. Nobody wants to read that. It's so awful out there. Nobody wants to read books with people wearing masks. We don't want that. And this is a thing of relevance. This is a thing where we have to take responsibility as authors, as publishers to contribute to the discussion, that this doesn't happen again, that the whole society or the whole world of several societies just don't forget about it anymore. This is what happens if topics are not discussed and are not taken into culture and pop culture. Well, how do we tell stories? Any idea? Tiktok. Yes, very short stories, yeah, but in a visual format. Visual and audible, yes. Any other ideas? Twitter. Videos on YouTube, yes. We tell jokes, yes. Books, yes, of course. Magazines, papers, but they're all mediums. They're all media somehow, but how do we tell stories? Yeah. Back again, that's one side. There's a Christian redemption. Maybe you want to take the microphone if you say more than two or three words that can easily repeat. Hello. Yes, there's a type of model that's there and back again, like Tolkien wrote, where you go out, have an adventure and return to a safe nest. And then there's the one Hollywood likes, which is the Christian redemption story. A man is a cunt and he sees that he's a cunt, and then he redeems and he becomes a better person. Yes, and that's what we're doing today. There is a person called, what was his first name? Joseph, Joseph Campbell. In the 1940s, he did research and wrote papers and a book about it. It's called The Hero's Journey. Who's heard of The Hero's Journey? About a third of the people here. Okay. It's just what you said, and we're coming to that in a bit. The first thing he found out is that humans all over the world are telling stories quite similarly, not exactly the same, but quite similarly. And they're using a very similar structure all over the world. You have a hero and she goes out in the world. And then she lives there and things happen and she reacts to them. And then she's growing on what she's, yeah, what she's living and on what she's experiencing. And then at some point, she has to fight a battle. And then she comes back. But where she comes back to, she has changed. And her old, ordinary world where she started out from, it's a different world suddenly for her. And this is what we're experiencing right now. This outside has changed for us. We all have grown on the stories we've lived through over the last two or three years. And suddenly, our ordinary world isn't that ordinary anymore. Or are we still in our story world? Good question getting there. The thing is, if we as authors and storytellers tell our stories and work with the topics we have today, as I said before, it's our responsibility to contribute to our culture, to contribute to our discussion. It's not that important that everything we tell, if it's about probably IT security, that everything is technically correct in the smallest detail, but it has to be plausible. Because what we're writing, I said before, we're reaching people out there. We're contributing to the discussion. We're reaching also political decision makers. And suddenly, political decision makers think and actually believe it's really easy to do a hack back. And it's really a good idea to do that. Because everyone in this room is skilled enough to just hack, let's say, Sweden or China or the US. Because this is something you can just do by being a hacker or a nerd. Because people write stories like that. No, it's not that important that this looks like it's done in a minute. It's not important that it looks like, oh, if you just pull out that screen cable, the internet connection is gone. It doesn't matter. Nobody's looking at that exactly. People look. People understand stories on a real basic level. We understand stories not here. We're understanding stories somewhere much, much deeper in our lizard brain. And this is where those fuzzy ideas like, oh, this is totally easy to do hack bikes on whatever, the US. This is totally easy to do that. They understand it on this basic level. And we just can't have that. So this is a bag I'm giving out in the world to all fellow writers. Please don't do that. Please write plausible stories. They don't have to be exact. They just have to be plausible or realistic tiny bit. Okay. What do we need to tell stories? Anyone? Idea? What do we need to tell a story? Social cohesion, yeah? Maybe into the micro. To learn from things that happened before. So to remember stuff that happened so we can become better. Yes. One or two steps ahead of me. No problem. No, I'm thinking about things like we need some characters doing stuff for a start. Probably we need something like a location or several locations. And then we need stuff that happens. Three basic ingredients that we need for a story. And then if authors get to their work, they're, yeah, the two far ends of how to write a story. Any idea? Same session. Yeah. So perspective is a thing. Yes. But I'm at the author point currently. So how can we write a story as an author, as a writer? The two far ends. One far end are the plotters. People who plot their story. And the other side, the other far end are the so-called panzers or discovery writers. People sitting on the bottom of their pants and discovering or living their story while they're writing it. So they don't sit and make the most of the work in the beginning. But they're doing most of the work while writing and afterwards in rewriting and editing. Those are the two far ends. And everyone, you too, me too, is somewhere in the middle or at some point on that scale between plotter and panzer or discovery writer. The thing is what we're doing today. We're plotting. Actually, over the years, I realized I really love plotting. But it can be too much. And this is a decision based on which project I'm working on. By the way, the project I'm currently working on is a sci-fi dystopia that started here at Shah five years ago. So not the story world, but the idea of the book started here after that creative writing workshop. Yeah. The beauty of plotting can look like that. Yeah. That's my pin board that I used at home. This is how I'm actually working currently with lots of small cards, writing my ideas on them and putting them in a matrix. I'm doing that like that only for a few years now. But that all started at university when I came across that book. It must have been 1999 or 2000. One of the earlier semesters when I was studying English literature, there's a much newer version today. So there was like a 25 years special edition of it. And Christopher Fogler, he took what that Joseph Campbell found out. And in the 1980s, he put that in a structure that Hollywood authors could work with. So he translated the work of Campbell into something really handy for Hollywood authors. In the last 25 years, there have been lots of people working with story structure. And I had a look at it and compared some of them. And they all have still basically the same structure, the same same matrix, but with some differences between. So how does story structure work? Okay. Generally, we're talking about the story structure today, not so much about single characters and so on. And what I'm talking about will have contents from Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces. From Christopher Fogler, the writer's journey, Blake Snyder and Jessica Brody, save the cut. Oricke Dietmann and Jorenka Jogh with a new version of the hero's journey as taught at the Roman school in Germany, which is not yet included, but already somewhere in my mind is Gail Carriga, the heroine's journey. So all what I'm talking about today, this will be at the end again. So these are terms that are from four different hero's journey concepts. Okay, let's start fresh. Let's take the picture by the ways by Mats Berg. Just to have said that, we're here. I hope you can see that a bit. So we have our board clean for today. I hope you can read that. Is it okay for you? Good. What the first thing we know of our story. We're working in a three act structure that's beginning, middle and thingy. But the middle act, act two is cut in half. So we have act one, act two A, act two B and act three. This is our story structure for today. There, by the way, many more story structures like a story, arc, a story most that what are as total as with his three act structure and so on. So don't get nervous if you want to read into those things that things could sound differently. Okay, what we first know of our story structure is, at the end of each of those acts, we have a turn into the next act or the next half act. So we have a break into act two. We have a midpoint in the middle. We have a break into act three and we have the end, the final image, which is from Blake Snyder. So if you think in the movie, we have that final image where we're working towards. What are we starting with? Well, oops, with the opening image. It was a bit too fast. But okay, we have our opening image, our ordinary world where we start at. What's our ordinary world? If we say we're doing a story today, what's our ordinary world now? That's right. So here at hacker camp at MCH, our ordinary out there is quite different from mainstream society. That's probably true. Okay, let's think of So the setting here would be, it was a lovely sunny day at a hacker's camp somewhere in Netherlands. Okay, it was a sunny day at a hacker's camp, lovely hacker's camp in the Netherlands. Okay, who's our hero? Pardon? Yes, our Harold Eric is crawling out of his tent. So this would be our first image and Eric is our hero, obviously. Harold called Harold. Okay? Okay, what we also have is who is, what we also have in stories, meeting a mentor, a mentor who's going through the story for some parts together with the hero. Let's think Gandalf. Yeah. Okay, a speaker, yes. Who he's always looked up to and he's really looking forward to seeing her talk. Okay, so Harold is very looking forward to see a talk of a speaker he's always wanted to see. Okay, you're the speaker then. Okay, and what we also have as a concept in basically every story and what we need to tell a story are antagonists. What, who is our hero against? Up. So it can be a person. It can be a group of persons. It can be nature or it can be something like climate change. It can be politicals who, politicians who don't want to change anything about a system because it's cool to drive porches. Something like the police. Okay. I know the the Dutch police went to see the Greenpeace people after they gave their talk. So how about Eric doesn't know he's opposed to the police, but he's not the best of hackers. He's not the most popular of hackers. And then he discovers the person sitting or sort of next door is actually from the police here to investigate. Oh dear, getting there in a minute. Getting there. Okay, getting there. We can do that. By the way, in the 1980s, who's as old as me, probably remember in the 1980s, lots of stories, lots of TV series and so on we saw had corrupt police in them. And at some point, not so many years later, like everyone, were thinking the police in the US are always corrupt. Some people nodding. Yeah. This is what I meant by our responsibility as writers because we shape our society. We shape the beliefs of people. Like every policeman or police woman is corrupt, at least when they're living in the US. That has to be like that. They changed it. Currently, the police can do everything in shorter time than it needs to log in into a system. This is what people think today. And this is what politicians think today. Not only you or me or the neighbor or our grandmother or anyone, also political decision makers think that way because culture is like that. And this is what culture tells you. Everything is so easy and just takes a minute or less. Okay, so we have our opening image. Harold is crawling out of his tent at the hacker camp. We have the mentor, the speaker who's giving a talk. And we have antagonists. Probably we've seen them when we think in movie. Yeah, probably we've seen a police car somewhere out at the fence while we have a view over the camp or at the entrance. Okay, let's go on. We have a call to adventure. Something happens. What could that be? It was your idea with the police. So how does Harold actually get to know that the police is out there and is after that speaker? Any ideas? Probably the microphone to Harold Eric or Harold Harold. Well, that's easy because as somebody already mentioned, he is sleeping in a tent next to the police person. So he probably overheard it in a night somewhere. Okay, he overheard at night and then undercover policeman is in a tent next to Harold. Okay, yes. Are we painting ourselves into a corner a bit where we're putting the speaker in both the mentor situation and the damsel in distress situation, which makes it difficult for her to mentor Harold? Yes and no. Because you have characters in a book and they can actually change roles. So if we're thinking about, okay, this is a beginner story and we're the first is our first story ever short story 10 pages. And we have people changing their roles like on twice on every page that can be difficult that I don't mean difficult roles wise. I mean practical. If the police is coming to take her away, she's not here to mentor Harold depends for like 10 minutes. She can be for 10 minutes. She can do that. Can you please talk in the microphone? Harold will grow to see that he's really the hero and can do just as much as the person he thought was his mentor. So that's that will work out fine for us. We're getting there a bit later. So let's talk about act three when we're at act three. Okay, so we've got our call, whoops, call to adventure. And now we've got a longer time with its so called debate. Okay, shall I tell anyone? Shall I tell people? Should I alarm the speaker? Should I go to the auger? Should I the note burn down the tent? Should I did I hear it correctly? Did I make a mistake when I overheard what was being said yesterday night? Or probably what's my risk in telling, right? So there's a whole part of the story that's, yeah, undecided. What shall I do? And Harold is sitting in front of his tent drinking his first morning coffee, not sure yet if he's alive or not or called Harold at all. And suddenly it dawns on him. Damn, I really heard that. So and now what's he doing now? Hmm. Yeah, first day of refusal. Okay, no, I don't want to have anything to do with that. It's too risky. Nah, comma, I'm not the real, real best guy to do that. I can't do anything. Why should I go to the police or why should I go to the auger or whatever? Yeah, because team cohesion, yes. The hero in a story is always the character that changes the most throughout the whole story. Who learns the most throughout the whole story. So at some point, because there was some author at the beginning who said, you, Harold, you are the hero. Come on. Yeah, at some point, he's crossing the threshold. This he has to go out. He's exiting his tent. And now, yes. So we could say he goes to before he crosses the threshold, he goes to the talk and the speaker that he's admired for so long announces that she's up to something that's sort of in the borderlands between good and bad. So now he has to think, oh, which one of them am I? And he talks to a person who's like the chat person that we always have in the American movies. Oh, he's good enough. He can do something. And then later that night, that guy's just out drunk and he sees police mobbing. And that's the threshold issue. Getting there, getting there. Because we're getting into act two. Or act two A, actually. So this is the second part of the first half towards the midpoint. But when crossing the threshold, so actually getting into the story, going out, starting the travel. And the midpoint. This is what they call the promise of the premise. This is where all the trailer material comes from. So this is the fun and games part, also for the writer themselves, to live through everything we've got. Real hacking. Real police. Probably police harassing someone. Probably other people coming into the whole action. People following each other, yes, with e-scooters or on motorized tents. Yes. Yes. That's where it's happening. So, pardon? A low speed chase. Yes. Yes. People watching the fire show and the Tesla coils and all that. That would be happening in that fun and games part. Except for those things that we actually need for the story probably a bit later than we can put it in the story later. But the real fun part and showing everything we've got in our toolbox, this is act two A, towards the midpoint. And then, oh yes, and we have, of course, a B story. What's the B story? Idea? Yes, the less important storyline or the second storyline like probably a love, story. So Harold could find a new boyfriend or a new life partner of which definition at all. Who's a police officer? Right. So act two A often starts in movies at least with the B story. Whoopsie. Yeah. And then the midpoint happens. The midpoint is always mostly either a wrong victory or a wrong defeat. When we're saying, okay, we're talking about this should be a dystopia, then the midpoint would be a wrong victory because everything looks good. And afterwards, everything just goes down. If we're saying, okay, Harold may have a happy ending and may have a great story and the story is supposed to go out the positive way, then the midpoint would be a wrong defeat. Oh no. They actually arrested her. Oh dear. What now? Let's look into act two B. The bad guys close in. Long time of act two B. So now it starts getting really, really down. So what could happen there? We need an interrogation scene. Yes. And because this is a hacker camp, someone was hacking into the police office faster than it takes to log into Windows 10. And then half of the camp can hear what's actually being said in the interrogation, probably. Yes. In the silent disco with the green lights. Oh yes. In the silent lounge. When you're sitting there without. They don't have sound. Good one. Yeah. With the green hat that doesn't have any sound. Sounds good. Yes. And then there's the point. All is lost. Oh no. They actually put her in the cell. Hmm. And it starts raining at the camp. Yes. Yes. The lightning hits the abacus stage. Out of marty. Also in movies you mostly in most movies you have at that point the so called whiff of death. So you see something bad either there's a real death or you see a dead plant or something or whatever. So in the movies next time you see a movie and you see something bad, you're probably at the all of lost point. Just think about it. Okay. Then Dark Knight of the Soul. It's a bit similar to the refusal of the call debate stuff. So oh no. Everything is lost. What can we do? We need someone who can break them out. Probably luck picking people. This is the this is the part that was called ordeal at Foglar and Kemper. So it's a real real hard for Harold at that point. Okay. What to do? Are we getting into break into act three? They're told a bit differently in the U.S. that's taught as a aha moment or for comedies. That could be a aha moment. So I can handle it that way and it could be better than. Or in the German tradition or it's taught in Germany, it's an asset test and a failure of the hero. So Harold goes to the luck picking people, gets his team, they're going to the place, they're trying to get her out and now they end up themselves themselves. Oh no, our failure. And we're sliding into the so-called finale in the Blake Snyder version. It's the whole act three is only called finale. Okay, great. What does it mean? We don't know. At Kemper and Foglar they have the more mythical approach with reward and the road back and the resurrection of the hero and the return with the Alex here to his home village. Not quite that, but what we learned from it, what he said earlier, we have a circle being closed in act three. So the hero comes back to his home world. So what we are thinking about now is how do we get Harold out of prison and all the rest and the speaker and back to Hacker Camp. Probably the microphone over to Eric. But I don't use that because that's differently. Maybe because the the B story, the boyfriend from the B story helps. Maybe the boyfriend from the B story helps. This is a good one. Okay, let's have a look at another thing. A catastrophe happens. So we're sitting in jail. Everyone is sitting in jail probably except that boyfriend because he's not a skilled lock picker and was sent to get Marty. Oh, and this is the police officer, right? Hmm. So we have the other police officer, not a skilled lock picker, but he can get inside information. We've got the maturing of the hero, Reifung in German. So he learns, okay, I can actually do stuff. I can be as good as the speaker herself. I can get us out of here. And then we've got things that he's, yeah, initiating. Yes, please. Just a thought going the other direction, make him discover that his boyfriend is actually the bad guy here. We can do that too. Rest should never have happened, etc. And this is certainly a learning moment for him, a maturing moment. It is. But how can we get him out then? If, well, fraud vitiates everything in law. So the whole arrest should never have happened when that turns out. And now his big choice, I suppose, would be whether to rat on his boyfriend in the police and break up his potential life happiness or keep that quiet and become complicit. Hmm. Okay. So we need a character. So when we're saying, okay, we started out like that, don't we? At that point, yes, please. Yeah, I was more thinking that maybe the boyfriend had been sort of opposed to sort of, Oh, no, I can't do anything. There may not be a police officer, but an IT person working for the police. And now they use that to crash the system or something. But if we go with the thing with the boyfriend being the reason for it, then he can break out. Oh, but I know that this boyfriend like so and so. So I can use that as his passport and I saw password and I saw something. So can I have my phone call and he uses the phone call to access the police terminal and something. Oh, yes, he knows the name of his dog. This is really good. And the other thing is I'm still missing the dragons since we've got two dragons on site. I think we should somehow get that fire making dragon to the police station. Come on, for the for the whole climax thing. We just need it for for a bit. Just for the for the visual effects. While police was on site, because they were so evil, they also called the fire department for the dragons. But it turns out the firemen or one of the firemen is sort of in the same LGBT community as the hero. So therefore he says, Oh, these dragons are fine. But I can use this to go to the police station and I don't know use my hose to get them out. Oh, no, he has a he's a fireman. He has a ladder. Great. Okay, we're getting out of that. Good. And then the whole end is okay, we're wrapping up whatever we still have open. And of course, we're going to the final image as we think in movie, we're going to the final image, our changed hero probably has got some marks from the handcuffs or whatever, not the furry ones. Yeah, close to the close to the MCH Benzies. And his new normal. And then we arrive at a new normal back at the hacker camp. And suddenly we see the world through Harold's eyes in a new light, probably more blinky with more Tesla coils, and probably even with another boyfriend, the fireman. Yes. And happily that is the moment that Harold gets his own moment of fame on the stage. And of course that's on clairvoyant stage because abacus was hit by lightning. Thank you very much. Claudia, thanks a million. This was great. This was this was a huge, I would say it was a lovely waste of time, but it sounds better. You know what I mean? Yes. And this is what we actually do as authors that we write the stuff that brings all of us through times like pandemic, through times of war, by everyone having Netflix or books and so on TV series. And that's the work of authors. Thanks to all the lovely colleagues out there. All co-authors. Thank you as well. Thank you.