In my other blog I have mentioned how I dream movies sometimes. When I do, they sometimes are complete plots and I get to see how the stories turn out. I might be in them but generally I feel I am not. It's like watching a technicolor film (or whatever they call color technology these days).
This time it was just a small scene taking place in an office and he was facing guns held by two other men. I knew he was trying to protect someone else. He was shot. I woke up knowing this vignette had given me a hero and put my mind to thinking what else was there about this man that would fit into a good story. What I came up with led to Dark Angel.
Dill is a reluctant hero. He grew up in communes across the West, raised by a single father, who meant well but was often distracted or on drugs. He pulled himself out of that world only to end up in an even more troubling one as he goes undercover through pressure by a federal government agency.
The Dark Angel title comes because that is what the heroine calls him when she first sees him and knows he's the bad boy she's always been warned about. She is suspicious of him, but then becomes his salvation-- but it's not an easy salvation because Dill is a man with things he needs to forget and forgive. He's still caught in the dilemma that nearly kills him but it's more what is inside Dill that makes him both a hero and a man at the center of his own story.
Dark Angel is a bit of a fairy tale story, and when I was editing it, I realized it was Beauty and the Beast, a good man caught in a bad situation with only one way out. Dill doesn't know that it's love though. He's more busy trying to figure out physical survival until he reaches a point where he's not sure he can survive.
When I saw him for who he was, I incorporated the love theme from Beauty and the Beast into his story. Dill has been living as the beast, his wits and strength are what have enabled him to survive in a virtual jungle. He's a rough but handsome man; so this is not a beast of the flesh but one of the soul, darkened by experiences and needing light to survive and be what he was always meant to be-- a hero.
