November Write Club Challenge : News from Doha…almost by Geoff Hall

Ha! Such is my commitment to excellence;-) that on our flight from London Heathrow to Doha in Qatar, I thought I’d write some more towards my November Writing Project.

The writing part went successfully, but when I tried to post the first ever Stage 32 post from Doha(?) my VPN network was blocked as was any network that attempted to connect to my phone. Ho hum. It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya!

And so it came to pass that I’m now writing this at our accommodation in Sydney. However, the sunset picture is from our arrival into Doha Airport. I hope you like it.

Anyway, I had another one of those lightbulb flashes of inspiration about the script. It is now called ‘Breathe: One story. One day. One breath.’ but that wasn’t the aforementioned flash, just a matter of authorly focus.

I have planned 12 scenes, for this short film and thought the flow of the focus of each was too predictable/obvious. So, I made changes with my pen and notebook, rescued from Maurice’s threat at a little espionage with said equipment! Haha.

(Bear in mind though, that I’m writing this after just 3 and a bit hours sleep, in 72 hours).

Back to the plot. It suddenly struck me that what I wanted to do, was buck the trend of narrative films, where the final crescendo is followed by a dénouement/coda/epilogue scene and have the last scene as the crescendo - this is a poetic film after all and not limited by narrative conventions.

Now on to the characters. There are now two poets; a younger and older self, who have a discourse with one other. A kind of mentoring of the young poet.

Then I decided at 37,000 feet, that I wanted patterns, where the young poet not only received wisdom from nature, a Mother Tree. Have you read the The Hidden Life of Trees, which talks about how trees communicate with one another as well as supply nutrients to trees in the forest and not just from their own species. There’s a social lesson to be had there.It’s also about the Mother Tree sharing what some have called the wisdom of the trees: resources, threats, well-being.

I decided I would repeat this pattern with the older poet connecting with the younger too and sharing a little wisdom. Transforming from the realm of nature to the realm of humanity. In fact, I’m looking at making this whole thing about patterns.

By the way, the explanation of this is longer than the scenes in which it happens. It’s very visual. This latter scene will be the crescendo to the film and involves the passing of wisdom from the ‘mother’ poet to her younger self. There’ll be no coda, just a sense of heightened reality to finish with.I had written most of this scene on the plane and I’m really thrilled with it and also the concept/design of the script.

As a writer, when I’m working on a new project, I spend a lot of time ruminating on the story’s concept(s).

We’ll see what my antipodean holiday inspires and I’ll look to share more along the way.

Keep writing and g’day mates!

Geoff

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