Narrative Disorder… in Japan!

On Sep 15th The Times published some emails which were  communications between Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, a journalist with whom Davies was working on the newly released:  Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale

The first email in the article took my breath away with its description of the story development process. Obviously, Davies had been asked by Cook for notes which might be an insight to his process and Davies’ response is an insight into my own and I’m sure so many others’ process too… I’ve never seen the mud of story gestation and development expressed so clearly.  When I say to you "Sorry, I’m terrible when I’m writing" because I haven’t called in a while or because I’ve been sitting right there but not quite present and it’s been going on for months and yet I don’t have anything I’m ready to show you or even seem to be able to tell you the story very clearly… well, it’s not an excuse but this is why.

From: Russell T.Davies To: Benjamin Cook Sunday February 18, 2007 12:41:59 GMT

There’s little physical evidence of the script process to show you. No notes. Nothing. I think, and think, and think…and by the time I come to write, a lot has been decided. Also, a lot hasn’t been decided, but I trust myself, and scare myself, that it’ll happen in the actual writing. It all exists in my head, but in this soup. It’s like the ideas are fluctuating in this great big quantum state of Maybe. The choices look easy when recounted later, but that’s hindsight. When nothing is real and nothing is fixed, it can go anywhere. The Maybe is a hell of a place to live. As well as being the best place in the world.

I filter through all those thoughts, but that’s rarely sitting at my desk, if ever. It’s all done walking about, going to town, having tea and watching telly. The rest of your life becomes just the surface, chattering away on top of the Maybe…and the doubts. That’s where this job is knackering and debilitating. Everything - and I mean every story ever written anywhere - is underscored by the constant murmur of: this is rubbish, I am rubbish, and this is due in on Tuesday! The hardest part of writing is the writing.

 

Technorati Tags: Russell T. Davies,Doctor Who,Writing,Story Development

Superman and I have long discussed how we lament (or, at least, are tired of) the tendency toward “chosen one” protagonists in fantasy and sci-fi stories on screen or page. In my own reading and writing I have, since primary school, very deliberately chosen to write protagonists who were not ‘chosen’ but themselves choose to undertake a hero’s journey during/because of which they develop in themselves the power/s required to succeed. Reasons?

1) Inclusivity - protagonists like this demonstrate that anyone can be a hero - even if I’m not mysteriously endowed with superpowers or my true lineage suddenly discovered, the protagonist can be a role model for me or, indeed, anyone. It also makes for the possibility of more interesting secondary characters - no built-in excuse not to pitch in or just stand adoringly on the sidelines.

2) Worthiness: To me, the person who chooses the journey despite having no sense whatsoever of having any special powers which will make the journey easier for them takes a greater leap into the darkness and will always be a greater hero than any person (no matter how reluctant or humble) who is aware that they were born with special powers or the right ancestry or chosen by the right mentor whose very faith is an assurance in their probable success. Note: any protagonist who seizes the sword as yet unaware of such powers and with no mentor who has hinted at them has this same “worthiness”.

However, as Jane Espenson observes (not uniquely but recently in The New Republic, the greater audience seems to be won by those stories in which the protagonists are ‘chosen ones’. And this has been a source of virtul paralysis for my current project - which character should I make my protagonist? Sure, a novel can have more than one protagonist (unlike most films) but there will still be essentially one main character. The obvious question is: which character is the prime mover in the story? Well, this is the thing: I’m God in this scenario - so not only do I have the freedom to choose either, I am also bound to make that choice before I can move on. Of course I’m leaning toward my old preference of the non-chosen (albeit she comes from a very special community of those more in-the-know than wider society) because I think it would be a more interesting story but that’s the issue: I am increasingly aware that I am rather an odd character and, though of course I am not unique and there are probably plenty of people like me out there with similar taste, there are more who are unlike me and prefer the chosen one stories.

So what is it about these stories? There are many theories about story etc… but I think one of the more interesting reasons (which really isn’t about story) is that the majority of people aren’t simply interested in a protagonist as the prime mover of a story, as an interesting character whose journeys they can follow but they are looking for an avatar - a character they would want to be AND THEREFORE (here’s where it gets controversial - tee hee) I wonder if the majority of people these days wouldn’t take the hero’s sword (or at least don’t think they would) without at the very least an Obi Wan or mysterious scar from a totally unconscious act of superior power to reassure them that they will succeed. If this were the case then they would find characters who do throw themselves intot the fray unarmed either totally unbelievable or too confronting because it sets a standard the reader knows they would not meet (and we all know that to hold someone to standards is to commit the terrible crime of the post-modernist world: being judgemental) Cynical? Yeah, a little, but what else really expalins it? Now, sure, people yearn not just to discover power within themselves but for someone else to validate that power, recognising that it was in them all along, preferably publicly and preferably in front of a childhood bully or celebrity we secretly believe would easily become a BFF if only we could get their attention lol! But that can still happen to the self-made hero and, surely, would be even more of an achievement because it has been earned and so it belongs to the protagonist much more than something they happened to be born with… but there, again, is my own take on the issue.

I’m reminded of a story I was working on several years ago. We had a housemate who was widely read (a librarian in fact) to whom I showed a piece I was working which involved a woman overhearing her boyfriend in a room with another woman and realising he was raping her (yes, it was a detective novel) and going to her rescue. This housemate said she thought it was well written but no woman would go to the rescue of a woman who was with her boyfriend - no matter how clear it was that the rape was occurring the woman shouldn’t have been in a bedroom with someone else’s boyfriend (the shocking moral inference being that she somehow deserved it, the story-craft inference being that noone would believe the character or want to read the book). I was shocked and frankly appalled at this but after asking several other women found she was not alone in her belief - I lost a lot of respect for those women that day but also dropped the novel idea - see, the scene I showed her was my opening ‘hook’ into the character so I lost faith in my ability to understand what would make a strong female protagonist attractive to a reader. And here I am again.

The thing is, there are plenty of people who throw themselves in when they are needed, they are the “I just did what anyone would have done” people we see interviewed after a fire or some such emergency. We surely laud these people because we hope we would act in this way ourselves, no? Or is it actually the opposite? Do we make such a big deal about it because we really believe we wouldn’t do it ourselves - or, taking it further, do we make it something very special - insisting on the word hero, insisting they are very special despite their protestations to the contrary - so that we have an excuse not to be heroic when the time comes - afterall there’s nothing ’special’ about us. I hope not, but maybe the success ratio of chosen one stories to self-made hero stories might be pointing to just that. IF I were Harry and had his special powers I would save the world but I’m not, so I don’t have to. Whew!

Of course Lord of the Rings is one of the big successful self-made ones - Frodo is no chosen one (despite Gandalf’s protection) but, let’s face it, it’s always been a niche novel - only the films have had wide appeal and how many people do you see dressed as Frodo at openings or parties? (of course that’s probably more to do with that particular avatar not even being handsome lol so there’s two strikes against it in the mainstream.)

So, my decision is made (YAY! Just as uni begins lol) - I will stick with my gut and make the ‘everywoman’ my heroine (or just ‘hero’ as the SEVEN pages on non-gender-specific language in my UniSA unit information pack informs me I should use LOL.) She will develop and discover various abilities, perhaps even be given them by people/beings who believe she is worthy but she will BE worthy because she will have made the choice to do whatever she can with or without any extra powers or assurance that she will succeed - because that’s what REAL heroes do. Maybe it means I’m gimping my chances of being published but … shrug.

How appropriate that this has happened to me on May Day ^_^ The new work I’ve been developing, that was tentatively titled “Nephalim”, has been gathering momentum - working away in the back of my mind, springing ideas on me as I read, cleaned the house, walked to the shops, chatted to Superman about other things entirely… These are the signs that, at last, I may have found my next project - one which should be a stayer. You’ll have picked up the qualifications there and they are deliberate because there was still one thing missing: my premise. The moment I discovered my premise for Shadowkeeper was the moment I became capable of finishing it. I discovered for myself what Lisa Dethridge had taught in her wonderful classes at RMIT: that the premise is not just some lofty, over-arching statement of purpose (as against outcome) for a work - it is the axis upon which it turns. Whenever you have a question about story or structure, the premise is your guide. Like a blues harp in the right key, when creativity is lacking your premise will always give you something you can write about till you find the creative angle again (even if you trash what you’ve written to get you there lol.) When you’re totally lost and doubting your skill and why you even started writing this thing and who would care anyway… your premise tells you why.

Today, I found my premise.

How I came to find my premise is worth writing about here because, as my writing friends know, lately I have been exploring the creative process behind how people choose which project to work on. I’ve asked writer-friends and scoured blogs and sooo many writers, it turns out, do what I do: let the ideas take us as far as they are willing, file that away then work on the next till that runs out, then pick up either the next or return to a previous one and so on, until one idea has developed far enough to become dominant (I’ve described above how I know that has happened.) And here is why I’m calling this an epiphany - what I have realised today is that this idea actually pulls together many, many of those embryonic, under-cooked ideas in my box files - going back so far that I feel that I may have been working on this all my life.

When I was about 15, I was lying in bed in the dark looking up at the moon when a huge black cloud drifted across the sky, obscuring my view - at that moment a title came into my mind, fully formed “The War of Wind and Moon”. I turned on my lamp and began to pen what I thought should be an epic poem (obsessed with Vikings as I was at the time.) I wrote two stanzas about the wind deliberately but somewhat impotently obscuring our view of the powerful moon with clouds … but I had nothing except a vague sense that it was “really deep” but beyond my understanding at the time. The title stuck with me for years and every now and then I would ask myself if I was ever going to write it and wonder at the mystery of it … then, one day several years ago (in a screenwriting class actually), I decided that it was just a damn good title and I had just been another teenage writer with a title and no story lol!

Well… today, as I was putting away the shopping at the same time as preparing lunch (for which Superman returns home each day now - sooo cool!), my mind wandered again to the question of why I was embarking on a story set in the mythology of the Christian world when I had spent my life researching so many other mythologies. Why was I putting my protagonist into a story in which she discovers angels and god and demons are real? Was I just trying to undermine my own spiritual exploration? Where do all the other mythologies fit in the story I’m writing? I thought about the other snippets of stories involving spirituality that I have in my box files. I thought about how, in exploring religions and spiritualities (including Christianity) I’d found that they all come back to the same ineffable “Source/Love” whatever the many faces of “gods” and “angels” the mythologies offered … and suddenly everything pulled together and the title came back to me with bright, full understanding.

“The War of Wind and Moon” is the eternal struggle between trusting in that ineffable “Source”, the ‘connection’ to which is so elusive and heavy with personal responsibility, and the desire to pour devotion onto something solid and seen in return for rules and rituals which allow us to avoid that responsibility. And that, my friends who have been wanting details about the new project, is the axis around which this novel will turn. The actual story? Well, there are angels and ‘gods’ and demons at war for the hearts of humans and a young half-human woman struggling with the responsibilities that great power brings.

Now I’m off to write and find out more ^_^

That’s my last comment about the golden, glistening abs in the movie (seriously, at one point I thought I was looking at shields in the distance - it was their abs!) Enough has been said about the abs elsewhere, in fact they and the ‘HooHah’-ing pretty much dominated most of the pre-release reviews. I suspect I know why… there’s not a lot else to talk about - if you don’t want to piss off the nice people who provided the reviewer tickets.

Before I lose all of you who turn off as soon as you suspect your taste will not be agreed with, especially by a woman-who-can’t-understand, let me say this: I do understand. In this era of political correctness and psycho-therapy there are few films or stories where a man can really enjoy a good, manly “HOO HAH!!” I get it. But just because there are so few doesn’t mean we have to celebrate one so poorly executed. Yes the shots looked like the comic. Fine. Go buy a second copy of the comic (in the big, beautiful A3 format) and have some pages framed. It’s art. But this film was excrutiatingly poorly written, directed and acted (though this was probably due to the direction.)

What is betrayed here is a lack of understanding of basic screen-craft. Film has different requirements to a comic. It is not static. It is more immersive - the audience is trapped in that dark theatre with nothing to experience but what is on the screen for every, consecutive minute. Until the DVD release, they cannot put the film down and pick it up again hours later when they are ready, having been refreshed by some other life activity, to dive back into the weighty, brooding, oh-my-god-the-honour-of-it-all mood that not only dominates but overwhelms this film. Asking an audience to have the same emotional reaction to each scene simply does not work - because you lose them. This has nothing to do with the attention span or intelligence of the audience - it’s basic emotional law that we become immune to emotional experiences (no matter how extreme) repeated ad nauseum. In practice this means that when your protagonist’s side-kick declares that his extreme grief is due not to the patriotic death of his son but “because I never told him I loved him” we laugh. Admittedly, the line was both corny and totally incongruous and it is possible that was the reason there were giggles but I submit that if simply ratcheting-up the same emotion constantly worked, even dialogue as bad as that would have simply washed over us in the maelstrom of emotion - it happens all the time in good action films.

One of the reasons this film is such a disappointment is that action films are masters of the emotional roller coaster - it’s why they are so popular. Good ones keep us on the edge of our seats never quite knowing what is going to happen next, hitting us hard just as they have made us laugh. Nothing unexpected happened in 300 and, frankly, after the first 30 mins nothing new happened, nor did the same things even occur in some different way: rousing speech to men, fight, rousing speech to men, bad guy or wife POV, rousing speech to men, fight, rousing speech to men. Seriously, the way these poor actors were made to pose and change cameras between each sentence had me dreading the next two hours ten minutes in - this wasn’t acting, it was voguing.

Several reviewers have touched on the historical accuracy of the film. Those of you who know I am an historian at heart were probably waiting for the bit in which I slam the ‘revisionism’ but I’m not going to because I think it’s irrelevant. A film needs a good story and, whatever inspires it, artistic license is valid AS LONG AS IT IS NOT PRESENTED AS TRUTH (like that damned “King Arthur” movie urgh.) The inspirations from Herodotus’s Bk 7 are clear:

• there was a contingent sent to the pass (it was to hold off the Persians for as long as they could while the army of Greeks that we saw at the end of the movie prepared for battle);
• that contingent was made up of many greeks, but at the end, knowing they would be defeated, Leonides sent all but the Spartans and Thespians home to join the preparations for the larger war;
• there was a traitor who gave away the path behind the Greeks (he was from Milas not from Sparta but their recently exiled King Damaratus was also in Xerxes company informing on them - so squish these two together and maybe that’s where the malformed creature comes from);
• in fact they make an entire scene directly from: “… it became clear to all, and especially to the king, that though he had plenty of combatants, he had but very few warriors.”

So the story provenance is fine - all that is required, as far as I’m concerned is that its own internal continuity be intact and it is. The film as a whole is presented as David Wenham’s character telling a story to the troops before they march on the very enemy in the story - it is supposed to be propaganda (something not the sole domain of nazis as Paul Byrnes of the SMH would have us believe - check out OUR recruitment posters from the WWs). Frankly, though, the writers’ would have done well to follow Herodotus a little more closely - the story structure is better!

I am sure that, even as I write, someone is penning an article declaring that these movies (I am of course including Sin City which I would rate above this one) are a whole new genre to themselves. I’m sure there will be a carefully crafted definition which turns each shortcoming into a deliberate and brilliantly executed requirement of the genre - and every critic of the movie into a nouveau-philistine. The truth is that what we have here is a story created for another medium painstakingly recreated without respect for the new medium and the result is a ‘moodie’ NOT a movie.

*For those of you interested in the real history this is a short but excellent article on Spartan society and its structure (you’ll note these men fighting for freedom ruled over a ‘country’ in which their slaves outnumbered them 10 to 1) and this is a link to the text and commentary on the relevant Herodotus.

I found myself at a writers’ forum today. I decided against joining the community but couldn’t resist clicking a link they had under “Sponsors”

Try it yourself (not if you’re doubting yourself as a writer, though lol)

Careers as a Writer

A quick note as the dishwasher prevents my shower and I’ve finished taking measurements of every piece of furniture we have and gathering together every possible thing I could need with 5 days in Sydney ahead of me … to find somewhere to live. Yes, Superman has been offered a position in Sydney and we have taken it like the trollops we are - lol. Actually it’s wonderful for his career - looks to be a really satisfying project and the whole relocation thing is quite exciting. I will miss everyone here and we are really disappointed to be leaving this fabulous apartment in this fabulous location so quickly but we are looking to live fairly close to Cronulla beach so that should be a whole new experience in itself REAL beach - none of these wimpy Bayside ‘waves’ tee hee. What’s more, this 37th move of my life (yes, I’ve been counting since I was 9) looks to be the least hassle as Superman’s new company is handling everything for us - and I mean EVERYTHING. A lovely young lady arrived at my door last week and actually used the phrase “won’t have to lift a finger” lol. House goods, car even the cat all a piece of cake for them so… touch wood …

The writing is going great guns, hence the lack of blogging Well into Chapter 4 (yes, 4!!) and I have discovered an application called Page Four which is made specifically for prose writers and which I am loving. I found it linked on the “scriviner” site when, all excitement, I went to trial that application - only to find it wasn’t available to users of the MAJORITY O.S!! I mean, come on people, I know that in the future everyone will THINK we all used Macs because of the genius product placement in every TV and Film production of the past15 years, but seriously… *grrr However I don’t actually need the extra whiz bang research abilities of scriviner for this adaptation so I’m actually happy-as-larry (hmm since the only Larry I’m familiar with is he of Curb Your Enthusiasm I think we need a new phrase) with Page Four.

Anyway must go - heaps to do before I head for the plane…

I have discovered that NOT TURNING ON THE COMPUTER CONNECTED TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD AT ALL during the day helps me to write!! Huge discovery I know lol but there it is.
Of course this doesn’t mean the computer doesn’t go on to check mail and then play Warcraft - all hail Burning Crusade! - after Superman gets home but part of the ‘keeping the marriage working” thing is the “do not write while he is home” cause, lets face it, I’m NOT HERE when I’m writing LOL.

Chapter One of Shadowkeeper is as done as it’s going to be before I move on to Chapter Two and I’m pretty happy with it. The beginning and the end will change before the draft is finished but the beginning in that way that beginnings are never quite finished till the whole thing is finished and the end because the whole chapter thing is not natural for me and I suspect the first scene of what is currently Chapter Two may need to be the last of Chapter One - OR actually the beginning LOL. Swapping openings and conclusions was something I discovered at Uni - invariably (to the point that it became a formula for me) I found that I had a natural tendency to outline what I was going to say at the top in a little too much detail for an introduction and then precis my points wonderfully succinctly at the end (mostly because, having written then damn thing, I was then clearer on what my points were) so my leave-it-to-the-last-minute strategy became: write it from top to bottom; swap top with bottom; race for bus to the Ming Wing The only essays I got less than a Distinction on were the ones where I panicked and lost my self trust and didn’t do this.

Anyway Chapter Two is underway and I very well may not be back till it is done. Unless I block…

Ah… 2007 feels better already - some challenges already but optimism all the way… So, 2nd jan and second post since restart - not bad at all. After reading the last post Superman (I married into the Justice League don’cha know) was all support and cheering but asked “What are you going to write, then?” Hehe I missed that, huh? Well the plan for this year is thus: Novelise The Shadowkeeper and at least outline the next in the series (which will deal with Brigid holding on to her belief in and ability to travel to the Shadow-lands and helping others with their own journeys therein.)
Why novelise? Well… various producers, agents, editors in Hollywood suggested “having a book published is a great way to attract attention for script” The tone in which these words are spoken always suggests that this would be a simple matter - much simpler than getting a movie greenlit. Now having had some experience in the publishing industry my reaction to this casual line was and still is - ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!! These people clearly have no idea that it is just as hard to get published as it is to get produced - sure a film costs a lot more to make than publishing a novel - but it’s still just as difficult to be read, get an agent blah blah… What’s more, not every story should be a novel, nor should every story be a film or a comic or whatever… some stories are only appropriate for certain media. HOWEVER Shadowkeeper could translate well as both novel and illustrated story book - both of which I would like to do and as an illustrated book can be based on a novel but mostly because a novel is something I can produce without requiring an artist, the novel is where I will begin (there’s a big kids theatre spectacular in it as well, I believe, but that can wait :) ) I have had a couple of false starts at the novelisation but I now admit to myself that I was really trying to find a way to just reformat then edit the screenplay into the novel in exactly the way I lament people think you can just reformat a novel into a screenplay - not because I disrespect the medium in any way but, frankly I was over the story - I’d had enough. Now, with a little distance and a realisation that there are more stories to tell of this world, I’m ready to dive into it again.
Et voila - I have committed myself! LOL

Well, the Nicholl-prompted requests seem to be dribbling to a stop (only 1 in the last 4 days) but I have started to receive script requests from those who requested only a logline and/or synopsis (4 this week.)Â Come January I will, at the least, have people to pester! I’ve also received some responses from earlier queries so I’m quite happy with all that. I’m happiest now that the new sp is really starting to develop into something interesting -Â looks like it’s going to be genre confused again but what can I do? I simply can’t shake that anime influence…Â

I’m pleased to be able to report that I have had several queries for either a synopsis or script (for both production and as a sample) of THE SHADOWKEEPER thanks to the Nicholl result. So, all has not stalled - on the contrary I have received a few queries each day since the 15th Oct, when the finalist results were announced! Well, back to BACK-UP (got to think of a better title!!)