Okay, remember last week when I said I wasn’t going to write about what was going on in Egypt because it was too far out of my social comfort zone – ie. I didn’t know enough about the country or its culture to make it believable and I didn’t want to do the research needed to bring myself up to speed.
Still true, but…I just read a column by Dan Gardner about the psychology of the revolution happening over there which I found truly mind-opening. Maybe obvious to others, but to me the idea of a popular uprising’s success or failure turning on that indefinable swell of a bunch of uncertain people all polling each other to see whether they were going to take part – well, that’s just delicious.
Because Gardner’s column was so well-written, it sparked immediate images of individuals talking politics with their local butcher, their barber, their postal worker, the neighbor they never normally speak to, taking their emotional pulse, their commitment to change.
Doesn’t have to be in Egypt. (Though I just had a great flash of a quick piece following the thoughts of an Egyptian man thinking about the revolution against Mubarak and how it’s finally time and this will be glorious. He prepares, runs into Tahrir Square screaming, and gets gunned down. Because the story is set in 2010, not 2011. He was a man before his time and pays for it.)
It doesn’t even have to be a country-wide revolution to overthrow a dictator. How about an office that’s being run by a petty tyrant? The workers one day have had enough…or have they?
Jorge, who’s recently witnessed the dressing-down of a co-worker that hit so close to Jorge’s situation it made him almost pee his pants, catches the eye of two other workers and believes they feel the same thing. He ventures the idea around the water cooler that if all the workers were to go to the vice-president, they could probably get the petty despot turfed.
Two of the workers at the water cooler get excited by the idea. The third says nothing. Jorge’s scared. If that third worker tells the boss… And if Jorge presses others to join him, the chance of one of the others telling the boss… And if they do start to organize and the boss senses something and implements some countermeasures…
Lots of inherent drama there. The main story decision beyond this would be deciding if this was going to be a “power to the people”/”triumph of the little guy” kind of story or a “you can’t fight the system”/”corporations are ultimately soul-destroying monsters that can’t be beaten” kind of story. That would be your voice – how you tend to see the world, at least on the day or days you’re writing the story.
Pingback: Story Idea #6 – But how do you actually create a story? | Terry's Blog