The Fight for Five Million: Beckett’s big book

When Beckett Dodd’s favorite reality show, Total Drama, ended with no renewal in sight, the then 9-year-old decided to create his own reality show storyline, which he recently published as “The Fight for Five Million.”

“When my favorite reality TV show was over, I felt empty inside,” he explained. “I tried to find a book that was like that reality TV show. The closest thing I found was ‘Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.”

Beckett loves Chris Grabenstein’s series, but it still didn’t scratch his itch for a good reality TV show.

Tapping into the character drama and challenges from his favorite shows, Survivor and The Amazing Race, Beckett combined that with plenty of twists and turns and his style of sarcasm into a storyline that spans 20 episodes through a season of “The Fight for Five Million.”

“I didn’t make this book for anyone else but me,” he said about what he calls his passion project. “I wanted to read a book like this, so I decided to make it.”

At first, he wrote a 13-page short story. “It was the longest writing I’ve ever done, so I was proud of it,” Beckett said. “But I thought, ‘What if I make this longer?'”

He went back and began writing his story but soon learned he would need to do some planning first. “There’s a best-selling author named Abbie Emmons and she said to always make an outline,” Beckett said. “I didn’t want to do that.”

But after he finished that first chapter, Beckett realized he would need something to keep track of all the characters in the book. He created an outline in a Google Doc. As he faced the daunting task of exceeding those first 13 pages of writing, Beckett figured if he wrote four pages daily, he would have a book done in about 20 days. “I wanted to make each chapter about four pages because I did the math, and it would be about 80 pages long. I thought that would be a really good stopping point,” he explained.

But after writing and rewriting—he admits that his early work at nine was pretty bad— the 20 days turned into a two-year process and the chapters were longer than four pages. He also learned more about the writing process as he created the story. What started as mainly straight dialogue between characters began to be filled out with the narrative descriptions needed to move the plot along.

The story follows 20 contestants and movie star turned reluctant reality show host Nolak Mohmad as they see who overcomes the challenges and avoids being voted off to win $5 million. “At any moment, a character may get eliminated and make you cry; then the same character cracks a joke about it. There are relationships made and many broken. This book will make you laugh and make you cry,” he writes in the jacket description.

Beckett asserts he writes great characters, many of whom reflect people in his own life. Carlos, a character who became one of his favorites, is based on a close friend who moved to a different school. “Carlos was there as a filler character. He was there to be eliminated early and then have some small effect, ripples in the story,” Beckett said.

But as he was writing Carlos, he found that he liked him too much to let him go early in the game. Beckett decided Carlos would have a bigger impact than initially planned. “I just wanted to keep writing him,” he explained. “I accidentally made him have one of the best friendships.”

Other characters were harder to write, like Jimbo. “Without giving too much away, he was insufferable,” Beckett said. “I couldn’t write him.”

He wanted to eliminate Jimbo early in the story but couldn’t do so without creating a plothole.

Then, there were those moments when a favorite character was about to be eliminated. “I’m just trying to hold back tears as I’m writing their last words,” he said. “Afterward, I would get into a really melancholy state.”

His favorite part of writing was imagining the challenges the contestants would face. Most were of his creation or modified from ones he found while researching online. However, with subtle winks, he does clue the readers in when a challenge may have appeared on another popular reality show. His character Carlos even mentions that he has seen a certain contest before, “but he never figures it out because of copyright reasons,” Beckett explains.

In addition to writing and rewriting his story, Beckett researched how to self-publish. Early on, his parents, Joshua and Megan, told him that if he wrote a book, they would figure out how to publish it. As they watched Beckett spend a lot of his free time, including getting up at 5:30 in the morning to write, writing during summer break and writing before going to bed each evening, they realized they really would have to figure out how to get it published.

“He is not one to be patient,” Joshua said. “He didn’t like how fast we were trying to figure it out, so he went on his own.”

He brought it all to them, and they worked with Amazon to get his book online and eventually into his hands–his dad, an art teacher at Jasper High School, created the cover for the book.

The first physical copy arrived at their Jasper home last week. It was the one for his grandma, but, in the mystery of modern shipping and logistics, it had arrived a day earlier than Beckett’s personal copy.

He said pulling it out of the package was amazing. “It was like in The Lion King when it’s the opening scene,” he explained, holding his hands over his head with his book.

Since publishing, he has sold a few copies, and it has been neat to see others reading it at school.

“My friend bought it as soon as it came on Amazon,” Beckett said. “I’m just stoked because anytime I see her, I’m like, ‘so what’s happening now?'”

Beckett is taking it easy on writing now that he has finished “The Fight for Five Million.”

He is enjoying rereading it, though, because, in the end, he really did write it for himself.

The Next Chapter in downtown Jasper will host Beckett Dodd on Saturday, November 2, from noon to 1:30 p.m. for a question-and-answer session and book signing. Books will be available at the store, or you can bring in previously purchased copies.

The Fight for Five Million can be purchased here.

Beckett’s parents are Joshua and Megan Dodd, and he has an older brother, Ryker, and a younger sister, Lennox. The family lives in Jasper, and Beckett attends Jasper Elementary School. In addition to writing, he loves soccer and is obsessed with animatronics that break down. His ultimate dream is to be on a ride at Disney World and witness it when it happens.