A View Of The Mountain - Uprise & One Last Chance

Yesterday I polished up a short script that I wrote on sunday. I'm calling it ONE LAST CHANCE for the time being.
(the title fits but doesn't feel completely right...)
It talks about doing the wrong things for the right reasons. It's a silent story and it's 30 pages long.

I found it really interesting to write this script for various reasons.
First it started simply with me chatting on the phone with a good friend of mine, also here in London, Marco A..
We were talking about writing, techniques, plot, characters, etc (the usual) and I started telling this story simply to illustrate a point. The idea was that we only get the story figured out as soon as we finish writing it. That's when we have everybody on board and we can start really making things click.
So I told this story about a kid and his girlfriend. And then started working backwards and telling him, now we could do this to make it more intense, and then that to heighten the human side and so forth. By the end I was saying: now I really like this story! I should write it!

And so I did.
But what I deliberately set out to do was to eliminate any speech baloons or captions. Initially this was simply to save time in telling the story. But then it became more of a challenge in being able to communicate ideas simply by using images.
I think it worked out pretty well.

And I realised that this is a brilliant and easy way to get stories out in a really condensed form. If I don't focus on the words then there's little or no backstory coming through. Or, rather, the backstory that comes through is precisely what I need to tell the main thing.

As I was writing it I kept hearing the characters wanting to come and play in my mind. To tell me what they felt, what they were experiencing. Little bits of dialogue between them. But I wanted to simply leave the images so that everybody will get to write those bits of dialogue in their heads, fill the gaps with their own experiences and make the story theirs. That's ultimately the goal of storytelling. The story becomes part of the reader rather than the writer.
In this respect I totally agree with Gene Wolfe. The reader is ultimately more important than the writer. If the receptacle isn't there why bother telling these stories?
I mean, I know them already...
(sort of...)

In any case, I felt this was a good exercise to keep in mind. Next time I'm stuck in a sequence with the dialogue, maybe the whole thing can be sorted out just with images.

Actually I did this yesterday in A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN.
I finally patched up Empire Growth and inserted it in the main text (after removing the old version, of course!), then a quick read (and page numbering!) on the next scene, inserted the new bit of text that I had written straight after Empire Growth (and more page numbering! Always one of my favourite moments...) and...
stopped.

I'm now on page 60.
And I have to re-write this sequence since it no longer holds true with the rest of the story. it's only 3 or 4 pages long so I should be able to do it still today, before I leave.
Since it has a couple of ideas that I want to keep, i'm going to be lazy about this and just re-write the dialogue...

And then... maybe I'll insert some of the script that I wrote yesterday.
I mean, if a guy starts talking about uprises, I guy should show some of that, correct?
That's what I did yesterday night up until 2am, with me falling asleep over pen and paper. 4 pages long hand with some 10 pages of silent panels.
Some good scenes though.
But they're a bit violent.
Well, not that much but, since this comic hasn't had any violence until now I'm a bit undecided if I should insert them in the script or not... The best solution I've come with so far is to insert a part here and keep the rest for the second half of the story, when the Prince is older and can hear about how things really are... At that point I'll probably add some captions to it.

In any case these next 20 pages should be easier...

Hopefully I'll be on page 80 or so by tomorrow...

And this was what I was talking about with Marco over the phone. you don't really get to know the story well until you've told it. Before that, more often than not, one feels that one doesn't know what one is doing... And this is the feeling that gets you - that gets me at least! - you don't know this, you don't know that... you don't even know that this or that is missing! Then the characters change and you don't know why... we have powerful scenes but disconnected from one another... it's a bloody mess. We don't even know where to start and, soon enough, we start thinking that this story isn't good enough to be told.
And we leave it at that.

But time passes.
And memory quickly forgets yesterdays depression and sense of failure.
And another story creeps in and, for some incredibly beautiful moments, this is going to be it. This is the story. the one you always wanted to tell. The one you will tell and that will turn heads and make them nod and smile and know.
But, as soon as you start writing, the question marks drip also into the text alongside the rest of the words.
There is only one solution:
to write.

I know that, as soon as I reach the end of A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN I'll have all the elements to actually clearly understand what this story is about.
I mean, I know the main things, of course, but there are subtler things, details, things that can tighten the story so much more (like Ardul's love of books or somebody else's obsession with war, etc) that only then will I be ready to truly tell it. That's when the structure starts to make some sense.
And it's s strange feeling because, if I think of it, right now, the structure is pretty much arbitratry (with a strong chronological component, though). It doesn't feel right. But, as soon as I go through the motions and tell every bit of this story... then it will start feeling as the best structure possible - and I'll know which bits are out of place.
Now, this is a perfectly alien feeling to me.
So, the main thing is to trust the story and to trust yourself.
Don't worry if you're writing too much. If new scenes keep being added. If you don't know where it's leading you. If everything seems so messy right now.
I get that most of the times.
It's easy getting lost when you have to find your way and the only things you got are a battered old compass that you don't even know if it works properly and a vague sense of direction.
The story needs that space to grow and to find itself.
So tell yourself you trust yourself and, most of all, you trust the story.
I do it all the time.
(it works most times.... other times I just need to be patient until the story is ready to come out...)
I just need to remember that.
And be patient and persevere.

And now I'm going to shut up here and pry my ears open somewhere else...

Probably somewhere with a view over a mountain...

peace.