SABRIYA Writing Journal 5: Starting to Write

So, I started writing. Not so fast, Stan.

You may note in the poster to the right that the picture of Sabriya has changed, and "Shanghai" has changed to "Shenzhen." More about that later.

The first scene of the first chapter (target 1,000 words) is supposed to set the tone and location of the story in an omniscient voice. According to Journal Entry 4, Step A, I had long pre-visualized the setting. So, I stepped to B. and began the "objective or universal POV" of the location and tone.  This is what I came up with.

It was a wild boar snort before midnight, June 1995, when thirty-three thousand taxis and motorcycles jammed the streets, freeways, and ferries of Hong Chi. The colorful conveyances shuttled high-maintenance women from the crowded luxury shops of Chao and responsible men from the financial district back to their plastic kitchens and bamboo bedrooms in the banyan-festooned foothills. Meanwhile, young couples, apparently without responsibilities and dressed similarly, flocked to the club district and its frolicking nightlife, and male tourists, who had long ago shed their responsibilities, trooped to Qui Plaza’s red-light district where strumpets displayed their available assets for rent. Along the densely populated late-night streets, wet and muggy from a late-afternoon squall, the intoxicating mix of diesel exhaust and steam from food stalls hawking exotic stir-fries, kabobs, and crepes anesthetized the masses in their search for meaning.

EXCEPT,  I had put off committing to a specific (historic) place. I really didn't want to get tangled up in writing another lengthy historical novel, because getting the history right is always challenging.  "Hong Chi" sounded generic enough, and not like Bangkok or Hong Kong, where I'd face the historical challenges of also including the local political reality that always seemed in flux. But I faced a dilemma. I didn't want the story to be so generic that the culture could not be clearly identified. The story is about human trafficking, so I stopped writing 500 words into the 1,000, and started to read (again) about human trafficking and organ harvesting in SE Asia. It became apparent that China was at the top of the list, not just because of independent gangs, but because in the far north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang, there are reports of forced government organ harvesting of ethnic minorities.

Time and place are essential elements to nail down, so I've made a working choice. 1995. SHENZHEN.  Shenzhen is a large, colorful Chinese city adjacent to Hong Kong. Shenzhen is located in the historically famous province of Guangdong, formerly known as Canton, where the Opium Wars took place along the Pearl River. I have read (twice) the non-fiction biography Canton Captain about Merchant Captain Robert Bennet Forbes (1804–1889) (written by James B. Connolly). I was fascinated by the place and wanted that research effort to play into the Sabriya project. Another inadvertent piece of research is that we have a close acquaintance who lives in China, who has visited Shenzhen and worked for the UN on anti-human trafficking projects.

Finally, as a visual person, I knew that I would need to physically describe my characters early on in the manuscript, and that their ethnic background would play a role in those descriptions. This realization led me to make decisions that pushed my desire for a generic approach off the table. 

Here are the steps I've taken in the last few days.

MAP

I created a map and identified the location of all the major scenes in the treatment. Google Maps is very helpful here, especially since all the locations identified in the map below (yellow dots) have photo galleries accessible on Google Maps. So, I can see what the land and buildings look like as they have been photographed in the last few years. 

TIMELINE

Next, I had to nail down the historic events and ages of all the major characters in the story. The principal story takes place in 1995, before Hong Kong was handed over to the People's Republic of China (in 1997), marking the end of 156 years of British rule. For my story to work, the United Kingdom still needs clout in China.  I've created timelines like this successfully in the past using Excel. The image below shows an example of the Excel timeline for Sibriya's story. It lists the central characters and their ages corresponding to events in the plot beginning in 1979. The last row is 1995. I will add political and other events to this Excel file as needed. (Yes, there are multiple story events each year, here represented simply by the letters A through Q.)

CHARACTER BOARD

My character picture boards were created decades ago by cutting out images from magazines. Years ago, I used pictures from Google Images (often celebrities dressed up for a movie character). But this time around, I used Microsoft Pilot AI. Here's the result. The prompts for creating these images include the ethnicity and age of the individuals. Of course, once I made these images based on age and ethnicity, I had to update the poster. The previous Sabriya image looked too European to come from S.E Asia.

Let's see if I can now get back to writing... although all the above is part of writing. Right?

Story Chronology and Flashbacks

Here's a lesson hopefully none of your will repeat.

I've been working with another writer for 4-5 years on a screenplay. It's an historical drama with two strong characters, a protagonist and an antagonist. Over the years of working on the project we've made numerous revisions, and often we've inserted episodes into one of the two character's lives to explain who they are and why they're making certain decisions. But look at the rats nest we've gotten ourselves into. Almost every time we've sent the script out to readers we've gotten one consistent piece of feedback: "Too many flashbacks." Do you think?

This morning I charted what these flashbacks looked like in terms of following the story as it's laid out in the script. The numbers in the chart represent scene numbers as they appear in the script.

Houston, we have a problem.

One reader correctly suggested we pick one of the two characters and tell a linear story.
Think she's right.

Problematic scene chronology of script in development.

Why Are Stories Necessary? Part 1

I received the following question from my friend George Chatzigeorgiou in Greece, whose excellent input to understanding the moral premise (with respect to the movie MIDNIGHT RUN) I have posted elsewhere on this blog, HERE.

I've bolded certain phrases that George uses, because they are so well put.

George writes:

Dear Stan:

I have a question regarding the moral premise which is so basic I'm almost embarrassed to ask it. I suspect the answer must be right under my nose, so please humor me by answering it!

My question is this: We've established that the essence of story is change, or transformation if you like. We've also established that this change of fortune, whether for better or for worse, is dependent upon a moral choice the protagonist makes; and we know that this in turn leads to fundamental truths about the human condition and how best to live our lives, truths which pass on to the audience or the reader, the recipient of the story. It's also widely accepted that stories are not just some luxury of sorts, and that there's a real need for stories that is universal and begins since the dawn of mankind. So, if the ultimate purpose of story comes down to passing on some crucial and fundamental truths, then whey do you need stories to convey those truths? Why do we need the vehicle of a story to do that?

For example, if I say to you, "Battling adversity alone leads to weakness and defeat, while battling adversity as a family leads to strength and victory", why won't my communication have the same profound effect in your life as watching 'The Incredibles'? If this truth is so crucial and so fundamental to the human existence, then why don't we immediately recognize it and abide by it? Why does this truth need to be incorporated in a narrative in order to have a better chance of making an impact on our lives?

Also, do you think a good story with a true moral premise can really change people and make a difference in the world? Is there some sort of mechanism inside us that causes a good story to have such a magical effect? Is there a real logic behind thinking that good stories can really benefit the world and make a difference? Stan, is there a thoroughly convincing logical argument to support that storytellers are really able to make a difference in the world and serve a high purpose, and that they're not mere entertainers who try to convince themselves otherwise?

Well, I don't know why I just didn't bold, underline, and highlight the whole message. Didn't I write a whole chapter on this? It seems I did, but I can't find it.

So, thank you George, for asking the obvious, ubiquitous, elephant-in-the-room question.

George's question get at the heart of what it means to be human. And by human I do not mean "animal," or any other lesser life form. Human beings are different, in the very way George is observing. THEY TRANSCEND everything else in creation. They ask questions like "Why am I here?" "Why is life?" "What am I suppose to do?" and "How can I be good and not bad?" And it is in asking those questions that we touch the very essence of the human condition—we are made in God's image. BANG! We have a self-conscience. Nothing else does. We know there is something more than the moment in time we are experiencing. It is inherent in our being, and we can't escape from it. Those that try to escape end up in psychiatric hospitals. Why story? Why, indeed! Well, here's why.

ONLY THROUGH STORY CAN WE "SEE" OUR LIFE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF OUR CREATOR. (See link at end.) Our thirst for stories proves the existence of something greater than us, beyond us, looking in on us, giving us meaning, and someone who most likely put us here. The IDEA that we can KNOW what life MEANS, is evidence that a transcendent ANSWER exists.

Okay, okay, okay... forget the grand philosophy and pontificating. Here are some actual answers, which I'll give in antiphonal fashion to George's highlighted comments:

THE ESSENCE OF STORY IS CHANGE OR TRANSFORMATION

Yes! The essence of life is change and transformation (up or down). We HOPE things, life, situations, ourselves, can CHANGE and get above (transform) our current miserable life. In the Rosary prayer there's this beautiful line — "here in this valley of tears" — which points to our human need to change and be transformed. It is only in reliving the lives of others (from true history, or metaphor, and parables) that we have hope of that change, BECAUSE IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED TO OTHERS.

If you simply tell me I can change, I don't see it, understand it, or comprehend how the change can occur. But, if you tell me a story or show me the life struggles of someone who has changed, then I BELIEVE, I ENVISION, and I begin to work toward that end. I have a role model, and example, in short — PROOF.

STORIES ARE DEPENDENT ON A MORAL CHOICE JUST AS OUR LIVES ARE

I don't' have time to explain all of this, but hopefully you'll understand that achieving the change we want or need, comes only through our own SELF DETERMINATION. The current political argument about socialism and Marxism vs. democracy and self-determination is what this is all about. God has given us (personally and individually) a choice: make good decisions that are in accordance with the laws that I've put into place which allow the universe to operate smoothly, or buck them and suffer the consequences. (There is a collective decision we can make and suffer consequences, for sure, but the collective is only as good as the mass of individuals who make the decisions. The collective has no consciousness, will, or soul. Only individuals do. And that's why Marxism and Communism and Socialism ultimately fail in all their forms throughout history. )

We are thus not responsible for bad things that happen of which we made no decision that caused the thing to happen. We are inherently (by virtue of God's laws, or natural laws) ONLY RESPONSIBLE FOR OURSELVES and those things that happen DIRECTLY as the result of our decisions. We can yell victim all we want, but ultimately we can control our attitude. If we are maimed by a mad man, our responsibility is our attitude toward the horrific event. Do we become bitter or forgiving? Do we seek revenge or consolation? And yet this does not marginalize or denigrate the importance of corporate decisions or the laws of a republic for the common good. But at the heart of all morality is the INDIVIDUAL and SELF-DETERMINATION -- you take that away and you'll end up like East Berlin during the cold war in very short order.

STORIES TELL US FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION

Our choice of our future and our own self-determination is a fundamental truth about the human condition. God has written into the universe and into all human hearts certain non-negotiable rules. One of those rules is "gravity" by the way. Another is the need to tell the truth if you want to live in community with others. Obey these rules an live. Disobey them and die. (See Genesis 2:17, although we don't need the Bible to know that if we step off a cliff we're doomed to fall to our death.)

STORIES ARE NOT JUST SOME LUXURY OF SORTS

Sooooo right! Stories require time, and time is the critical element of stories that explain life. Stories are as important as time. Only stories can measure and mark time. Stories cannot exist without time. And time is only measured in terms of stories.

One of the things that points to the importance of time as it interplays with a person's life is that rich and poor have the same amount of time. The richest can not can't make more time. They can make more money, but not time. Time is the great equalizer. There is no "class" when it comes to time. Consequently the rich can understand the drama involved in a pauper's life, and the pauper can comprehend the suspense that brings the rich to their knees. Indeed death is a milestone of time and story, and both the rich and poor die.

Time is that ubiquitous "dimension" (although it has no dimension that we can perceive -- it's a zero-dimension, a dot, that moves along a two dimension line called a life's timeline. But we cannot perceived the line, only the dot.

Yet God perceives simultaneously the two or three dimensions of lines that constitutes multiple lives in multiples places at multiple times. And because we are made in the image of God, and because time and story are dependent on each other, stories allow us to look at our lives, and all history as God does. Stories allow us to time-travel, and instantly bi-locate, even tri-locate our minds across centuries and continents. Stories allow us to experience the attributes of God -- the omnipresence, the omniscience, if not also the omnipotence.

SO, WHY DO WE NEED STORIES?

What I just said... to tell time. To tell us IN time, how important decisions are.
Stories manipulate TIME and allow us to see things as God sees them...without the limit of time. We can only experience the Zero-T of time. In reality, we cannot see forward or backward along our timeline or any one else's. But if we tell a story we can move through time and explain why things are, and how they could have been. That is because DECISIONS (especially moral ones) are made in time. A decision is a milestone, a marker, that helps define time. When we decide to study hard and graduate from a school, our GRADUATION DAY marks the culmination of many moral decisions to study so that we may eventually graduate. Thus, graduation is a MARKER of our moral decisions, and the GRADUATION event TELLS us what TIME it is. Telling the story about how we graduated allows us to explore the many moral decisions that we made right so we could graduate, and the many wrong moral decisions a friend made so he would NOT graduate.

WHY WON'T MY (didactic) COMMUNICATION HAVE THE SAME PROFOUND EFFECT IN YOUR LIFE AS WATCHING "THE INCREDIBLES?"

Because didactic communication (telling me what to do) does not let me relive the decisions of others and see the consequences of those decisions. If you simply tell me to do something and explain the consequences, the degree to which I believe what you say will happen or not happen depends on a long relationship of trust between us. That trust is the result of many stories and shared experiences passing between us. But if that deep relationship does not exist then there is no realization of the consequence. But a story SIMULATES my life, convinces me that the moral decisions and the consequence have meaning. I can see what happens to Mr. Incredible when he tries to do things alone. I can see what happens to the Incredible Family when they battle adversity together. Because of the relationship with those characters in the first two acts, I IDENTIFY with them. I have established a relationship with them and I am emotionally attached to their decisions. I have lived in their time and their story. I see myself in them because I have made decisions like they have, and to some degree lived the consequences. They reinforce the pattern of my life (assuming their story was created around a true moral premise.)

Unlike didactic communication (telling), narrative communication shows, demonstrates, simulates, and dramatizes the effect of time on those decisions and consequences. Didactic communication has no power to demonstrate, show, or dramatize. You've heard the expression that "experience is the best teacher". Why is that? Because experience creates the drama of time as it relates to decision and consequence, and the suspense between those two nodes. We make a decision (and take an action) and then suspense sets in as we wait to see what the consequence will be. That suspense and intrigue create an adrenaline rush that sensitives the synapses in our brain to remember the consequence when it occurs. Movies especially, but all stories too, rely on this natural method of time, decision, consequence and help us IDENTIFY with the characters as if we were them. Because the story depends on time to work, it can create drama, which gives us an adrenalin rush, which triggers our brain to remember the relationship between a particular decision and its consequence.

Stories also allow us to see inside the mind of a character and know their motivation and moral values, thus identifying the moral good and bad of attitudes and how various kinds of THINKING leads to kinds of ACTION and thus CONSEQUENCE.

A friend used to say to our kids (his daughter and my son before they were married, although it is still true now that they are married with 4 kids of their own): "You can make any decision you want, but you have no choice over the consequence." In family matter that consequence may come from the arbitrary will of a parent. But in society that consequence may come from a policeman, a judge, a jury, or even a spouse. We can cheat on our wife (we have the freedom to make that decision) but we have no control over her jealously or bitterness when she finds out. It's one thing to tell someone "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY" but to experience it is a far better teacher. But who wants to go through ADULTERY to learn its consequences? Not anyone, really. So, what's a better way to do it? TELL A STORY. SHOW A STORY. Let people identify with the husband and wife, and learn through a SIMULATION the natural laws of the universe. And, hopefully, they won't do it in real life.

ARE STORYTELLERS REALLY ABLE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD?

They do, undoubtedly. Newspaper and novel accounts of behavior and its consequence convince far more people than didactic preaching. Movie fans that watch the lives of movie stars come and go, learn a great deal about what not do to if you want to be happy. It's one thing not to get caught with a hooker on Sunset Blvd (e.g. Hugh Grant) but I'm sure Elizabeth Hurley wish he had avoided the hooker altogether. If Hugh didn't learn anything from that story out of his life, we sure should have.

We can easily say that storytellers have value, because people spent billions of dollars each year to watch stories, or listen to them. Stories come in all forms, from the $200 million block buster to the weather report. News, magazines, gossip, parables... they all communicate the cause and effect of moral decisions and their consequences. We can't escape storytellers, because they are as important as time and morality.

ANYTHING ELSE ?

Here's a link to a short essay I wrote years ago (but reposted on this blog) that explains why movies (and stories) give us insight into our "divine destiny." That is, stories help us transcend this life and give it meaning. Transcendence, of course, is the ultimate transformation or change. We hope for a better life. Time empowers that hope. And stories tell us how to achieve it.

Motion Pictures - A Window to Our Divine Destiny

Link to Why Are Stories Necessary? Part 2

Stories and Movies - A Window to Our Divine Destiny

(Originally published by CatholicExchange.com April 2, 2002)

Why are good stories and movies so popular?

The last two years (2000-2001) saw movie box office revenues soar. Even in times of tragedy, movies are in style. The events of 9/11 suggested that all businesses, even the film industry, would suffer. Not so. While there was a slump after 9/11, the film business has never been stronger. Why is that?

Seeing What God Sees

Good stories and movies are popular because they give us a vision of our divine destiny. Because we are made in God's image we have a natural curiosity to experience God's attributes. Unlike any other media, movies allow us to see what normally only God sees in five extraordinary ways.

1. Good stories and movies give us a sense of God's infinite knowledge. THE PERFECT STORM taught us about the rigors of commercial fishing, THE GREEN MILE enlightened us to the horror of death row, and AMADEUS revealed the politics of culture in 18th century Vienna. While it is true that movies rarely get all the facts right, they still tell us more than we could know otherwise. Filmmakers are able to condense into two hours what one person could never absorb in a lifetime. In a movie we are treated to a glimpse of infinite knowledge presented as a unified whole in a manner we could never conceive on our own. In this way, movies give us a preview of our destiny to know as God knows.

Inside the Heart

2. Good stories and movies reveal to us what is morally true. DIE HARD is about a vacationing New York cop who battles a team of terrorist-thieves in an L.A. office building on Christmas Eve. But what the movie is really about is how true love of a man for his wife, regardless of the obstacles, trials, and terrors, dies hard. That is DIE HARD's moral premise. Research indicates that the greater the validity, or truth, of the moral premise, the greater the movie's popularity. That is because what is right and wrong in God's mind is written on our hearts; and when our hearts resonate with the truth on the big screen, our word of mouth promotion generates big audiences.

3. Good stories and movies allow us to know what is in a person's heart. In a novel the author often writes with an omniscient voice telling us what is motivating a character to do good or evil. In a movie, this is replaced with images of characters in private moments or voice-overs of their thoughts. In WHAT WOMEN WANT, the audience, along with womanizer Nick Marhsall (Mel Gibson), hears the brutally honest thoughts on the hearts of the women in his life. The filmmakers also let us know Nick's heart with the same technique. Movies can, therefore, reveal the good and evil at the core of a person's heart and we see them as God does.

4. Good stories and movies allow us to be omnipresent. In JOAN OF ARC (Duguay, 1999) the filmmakers cut between five different story lines hundreds of miles apart. Skillfully we are treated to the convergence of the mystical Joan, her peasant parents, the scheming king, a vengeful bishop, and land-hungry dukes. We are like supernatural voyeurs watching displaced storylines being woven together into a tapestry of intrigue and Providence. We feel privileged — even superior — as we witness the desperate struggling, the naive decisions, and the malice aforethought. We see everything, everywhere, as it happens, just like God does.

Perceiving Eternity

5. Good stories and movies give us a sense of eternity. In eternity God perceives time in multiple dimensions, just as we see pieces on a game board. As we can see length, height and depth, so eternity perceives the past, present and future. Movies access the times and events of eternity with flashbacks and flash-forwards. In AMISTAD, during the courtroom scenes, flashbacks are used with staggering clarity to reveal the atrocities that were inflicted upon the slaves months earlier. To people in the courtroom the scene was described with words in the past tense. But to us the scenes were shockingly real and very much part of the present. Thus, movies give us a sense of how God perceives eternity.

Stories and movies, then, are entertainment on a cosmic scale. We can sense what it is like to have all knowledge, our souls can resonate with moral truth, we can clearly understand a person's heart, we can at once witness events in different places, and we can experience the past and the future as if it was now. Just as contemplative mystics seek dark corners in which to encounter God's presence, so moviegoers seek dark theaters in which to encounter God's attributes and sample their divine destiny. That is why movies are so popular.