This Week's Topic: On My Mind -- Compressing Real-Life Politics into a Believable Fantasy Timeline
Today's an election day here in Ohio. We're mostly voting for who will represent the party on the November ballot. As we spin in yet another face-off between tyranny and democracy, it's too easy to see the hellpit awaiting us. As a citizen, it's horrifying. As a writer, it's enlightening fodder. To have lived through 4 years of a massive and flagrant regression in morals, ethics, and basic compassion only to be threatened (again and again) with another 4 years of it, I'm trying to set aside my disappointment and fury so that I can distill the pivotal moments that enabled The Collapse to figure out where to start The Story.
There are so many inciting moments in real life over the last fifty to seventy-five years that it's difficult to pick where our protagonist's inciting moment should happen. How do I show an audience the erasure of self-regulating concepts like shame and public censure that once held higher authorities in check? That's something that happened over a long stretch of time, but is there a single moment--or three key moments--that can be built up to convey the crumbling of an institutional pillar? How do I show it without screwing up the pacing? It's easy enough to show capitalistic corruption leading to the downfall, it's been done a lot. Showing the process of the extinction of compassion is harder for me, mostly because it's the reality that makes me the most furious. Putting current real-world events into a fantasy setting with a story that expresses the futile yet desperate fight to revive integrity and altruism has to happen in a compressed timeline yet unfold over a believable blip in time. The pivotal events have to be pushed forward by the actions of the protagonist, when the reality involves a confluence of powerful people over generations.
As I head off to the polls, that's what's On My Mind.
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