Setting the Stage

Starting a story can be the hardest thing in the entire world to do. The beginning of a new story in life from making a decision, to moving to a new place, to walking away from an old lifestyle can all be very hard. Staring at a blank page knowing who the characters are going to be, where the story is going to be set, and what the conflicts are going to be but having no idea how to start can cause headaches. Beginnings and Endings can be the worse part of a story when not enough thought is put into the process. Abundant amount of advice exists on the subject of beginnings, for life people suggest everything from pro-con lists to flipping a coin. For writers, sometimes it is suggested to just start somewhere else that is not the beginning and go back. Unfortunately for me, I have a hard time writing without a beginning.

The importance of a beginning a story is setting the stage. Before being able to write a new story you have to know about what you are writing, who are the characters? What do they look like? Where do they live? So many questions have to be answered before you can stare at the blank page and even get a headache. Before you take a step to a new moment in your life you have to know where you are going? Why you choose that new job? How are you planning to get to that new destination? Beginnings are about questions, Endings are about answers and everything in-between is about the journey. I was reminded about the important of setting the stage by a few other creators this week in strange ways. Firstly, I have been trying to start the beginning of a story that I have been thinking of for over two years. Just because I know the birthdays, the favorite colors and the biggest fears of my characters does not bless me with the power to just be able to start. I have stared at a blank screen for about six days now and only hope that sometime this week I have crossed the starting line.

Aside from that annoyingly headache causing predicament, I also watched a Hulu recommended documentary called We Are Wizards. The documentary wasn't really thrilling, and it didn't give me any sense of insider perspective of a the Harry Potter Fandom. If anything the documentary was sort of boring, expect for those five minutes every twenty minutes of actual commentary mostly from the boys of Harry and the Potters. It might be that the documentary was poorly described as a view into the world of Harry Potter fans when it was in reality barely the tip of the iceberg of the fan world. It also almost made it out like these people were freaks and didn't clearly make the connection of the fact that people entered the fandom world of Harry Potter because they connected with the story, because it was part of their childhood, because it sparked an imagination within them that nothing else ever had. The importance of something like the Harry Potter Fandom, is that JK Rowling created a world so fantastic, so magically, so complete that the only thing left was for the audience to join in. The documentary centered mostly about wizard rock, and their stories, particular Harry and the Potters, Darco and the Malfoys, Whomping Willow, and The Hungarian Horn Tails (which btw, is a 8 year old). But again my problem was that the documentary didn't create the connection that these people who started bands were expanding into a world that was created for them by JK Rowling. It wasn't about how there was so much set up on that stage, how these people were able to write songs about Harry's first date in a magical tea shop or how Darco felt about not being the center of attention. There are even songs written from the perspective of wands, which let's face it couldn't really exist in the capacity that they do without JK Rowling giving them life as she did. So here in this documentary it also touched based on websites, only featuring one of the major players and again not making the connection for us on why this person was even passionate enough to create the Leaky Cauldron. And strangely enough there was even a segment on a woman who believed that Harry Potter was going to derail society by repackaging witchcraft and selling it to the unsuspecting masses. So in short it was a terrible documentary but the ideas behind the fandom stuck with me because it was a stage well set by Mrs. Rowling. Every detail is thought out, every aspect was well planned, we all know what houses we would be without needing a hero in each one. We all know what kind of wand might be ours, without needing a a 10 page summary on each wood and use. We can all guess what we might have liked to study, and what OWLs we might have passed and what wizard career we might have liked. It does not make us freaks, well not really, but rather give us an identity in a world created so wonderfully that all that was left in our reader relationship with Harry Potter was to join in.

More directly involved with beginnings was watching the pilot of the old show Sliders. I watched Sliders when it was actually on TV and was excited to find that recently it was added to Hulu as one of the days of summer additions. I don't think I had ever seen the pilot, I took the background story for granted it being explained in the opening credits each episode. I never really thought about the pilot, the beginning of the actual story but just accepted each new story line laid out in each episode. So I decided to watch the pilot of Sliders and found out that I didn't know much about the beginnings of the story, the character relationships, or the theory behind the sliding. Yes I had always understood that they were lost among many worlds, but never really bothered to answer the question of why. Mistakenly I had thought that each character, Quinn, Wade, The Professor, and Remy had all come from different worlds and just sort of become friends. The first episode established that all the characters were originally from the same world, their relationships were well defined, and everything was only sort of an accident. But in those 45 minutes a whole new world was opened up to the audience. We meet Quinn, our hero, likable and smart and slightly reckless. He takes us on a journey, introducing his anchoring love for his mother, his volatile friendly relationship with Wade, his nonchalant yet admiring attitude to the Professor and the non-existent relationship to Rembrandt. The story line moves through a series of slides, that start to establish that it is unpredictable and the problem is presented by an alternate Quinn (not so likable) also establishing the differences and possible problems that could arise. At least twenty minutes were set aside for the foundation, the rest for the action and moving the plot while still establishing the story. It was a refreshing starter, giving way as a reminder of how to establish a foundation.

So I'm on a hunt for beginnings in search of inspiration. With every new beginning, I am hoping to be a step closer to my own story, my own characters showing me where to begin. Hopefully my story will become a world of its own, where its so well crafted that there is nothing left for my audience to do but immerse themselves.