A Headful of Thoughts

I just read an interview with Robert McKee, a fellow who teaches screenwriting and has a book called Story. Last night before bed I watched a documentary on the Holocaust. Last evening I was giving more thought to the direction my story was about to go and I strongly thought that the loss of a child was too strong of an incident to use in the story. I needed another event or situation for the woman Kaylen to have gone through that had just as much impact but not that one.

I think that I thought this because the loss of a child in that way was so strong, so complex that I feared I would never come up with another device that potent for a story. That that particular tragedy was so very important it deserved a story of its own and much deeper treatment that it could get however far this is, through a short story.

But now I'm not sure. Maybe using it here forces me to invest more myself. In another story, I would have to struggle to come up with something as powerful as that. I suppose I worry that the beginning of this story was flippant and poorly thought out, and so deserves a weaker and more fitting tragedy for the woman to be suffering through. More than the keying of her car but less than the loss of her only child and marriage.

If I'm going to write trash then I should stick to trash and not belittle such time stopping events such as that. Like the Scottish Play, I hesitate even to invoke the name of the tragedy too often lest I tempt God with my Hubris.

But as I said before, I just read the article about Mckee and while doing that I went to Amazon and read the intro to the Story book and ordered it online. The writing is very powerful and I wish that I could write with that kind of importance and not worry that I was wasting my words. There's some part of my brain that sees words as pennies in my mind bank and that when I spend them by typing them, I lose my chance to use them again, more wisely. If that is the case, I must write badly until I really, really mean it and then my big words will finally pour out in the right order and everyone will thank me for not wasting them on drivel.

I need to learn and convince myself that writing is exercise and the more I use my words, the stronger they become and the abler I will be to get the order and appearance correct and make my point clearly.

I must write more and write more correctly. This is my goal. To write with meaning one must know what one means. Thinking must precede the writing. I was thinking today, Good for me. McKee says good writing stems from archetype not stereotype. I must learn more about archetypal stories.

I thought about evil versus good and what that means. Who chooses evil? Who decides to become evil and is evil something we are or something we do? The same question goes for good. I thought about a four box matrix with good and evil and strength and weakness. I thought about the documentary said last night about the war criminals and the concept of justice in the context of the Holocaust. The end of the war came and they tried to bring the top levels of the Nazi government to trial for being responsible for the murder of so many. But what did that mean? They talked about the Einsatzgruppen, taskforces, whose job it was to kill on orders. Women, children, civilians all. Old people, and special minorities.

The taskforce members would get up in the morning, shave, eat breakfast, kiss their wives and kids goodbye and then go out and kill, murder, civilians, children, women, all day. Say 2000-3000 each per day. Then go home, wash up and have dinner. They did this day after day. Were they evil or did they just do evil things? Surely this would transgress most reasonable explanations. They must have received evaluations by their superiors. You've been doing a good job, etc. Your numbers are down, Jim. You need to pick things up.

Anyway. I need to decide soon what Kaylen carries with her that makes her look to Gene for understanding and forgiveness or companionship and what is Gene in this story. He's given up most of the control of his life. He's made a compromise to work. He is what other people are looking for in a part. His own feelings and thoughts have nothing to do with his life anymore. He's a handsome chameleon.

More later,

(photo by jay mantri, jaymantri.com)