Never put your Columbian Drug Lord next to your Gay Hairdresser

 

                I honestly don’t know whether this is a legitimate principle of solid writing, or more of a pet peeve of mine, that doesn’t bother anyone else, but I’m going to run with it anyways.  In the movie “Blow”, which was about the drug business throughout the 70’s and 80’s, you had the Colombian Cocaine Cartels, the American consumers of cocaine, particularly the Hollywood in crowd, and between them, the protagonist, George Jung, a smuggler with the right connections to move that much product. George’s primary pipeline into the Los Angeles market was a gay Hairdresser played by Paul Reuben.  Hollywood types knew him as the go to guy for “party supplies.” Through him George moved millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine.

When are we going to meet this friend of yours George? We’d love to talk to this friend of yours George, find out how he moves so much  product.  Say George, why don’t you and your friend fly down to Cartagena for the weekend? 

          Predictably enough, once they had the source, they didn’t need George anymore and they cut him out of the business.  His life went pretty quickly downhill from there.  This led me to an epiphany which became one of the defining rules of how I do business, which is “Never willingly expose the source of your power.” It’s the first step in losing that advantage to your own detriment.  A real life example was when the British sold a Jet engine to the Russians after WW II,  who until then only had propeller driven planes. The Russians reverse engineered it, and a few years later we were fighting Migs over Korea. 

                In terms of writing, this comes into play when a writer has his hero for some reason explain or reveal his secret weapon/spell/alliance in a way that gives his enemies the time, opportunity and information he needs to negate the advantage.  It’s the hero equivalent of monologuing.  “

“Your reign of terror is at an end Lord Savage, for I have discovered the fabled resting place of the Spear of Triumph.!"

“How interesting. Minions, go recover the fabled spear of triumph before this fool.”

“Doh!”

             It drives me crazy to see this in a story, when a supposedly clever hero shows his hand and gives up an advantage he didn’t have too. For some reason, he explains or demonstrates or shows off the thing that gave him the edge he needed to win, and therein loses its effectiveness.  If you ever wondered how little it takes for a clever and determined foe to beat a weapon you thought to be invincible you should watch a documentary sometime about the British efforts to break the enigma machine. How the tiniest openings imaginable gave them the toehold needed to claw open an unbeatable code.

               I like a story better where both sides have to fight for their information.  A cat and mouse game where maybe someone your hero trusted is dating an enemy spy and lets something slip, but one of your code breakers intercepted a transmission so you know that they know, but they don’t know that you know that they know.   Then you get great stories like “The Departed” where both sides race against time to uncover the others secrets before it’s too late. That’s much more exciting for me. Just have your heroes be smarter. More practical. As if real lives hung in the balance before they give up a tactical advantage.