Day: June 11, 2016

A recent NYT article highlighted the strategies Donald Trump used to become and remain successful in the business world. To sum up the article, Trump made a lot of money on losing businesses by developing sweetheart deals to sell said businesses and avoid the debt for those businesses and their subsequent failure. This is in essence his plan for the U.S. Economy. Any basic analysis of the Trump budget strategy shows that he intends to put the responsibility of American debt on the countries we help support around the globe. He, perhaps falsely, plans to build a wall across the Mexican border and make the Mexican people pay for it. He expects Japan and many other countries to pay for the assistance we give them. This is a dangerous strategy beyond the scale of all the other rhetoric he’s created. The only reason people aren’t saying more about that is because it is so absurd that the republican led congress is completely ignoring it as a possibility.

Our country trades on reputation, presumed wealth, and military might. Our reputation is tied intrinsically with our presumed wealth. We give away a lot of money. We assist nations all over the world in an effort to curry political favor. We set up trade deals primarily designed to help them on the front end and build favor on the back end.

Trump wants to make America great again by making America a bully that takes advantage of international law to bully other countries and demand ridiculous arrangements that benefit America and screw the rest of the world. All that we’ve built with the world will begin to dissolve into resentment and realignment towards rising countries who are willing to offer support (see: China) eventually putting us in a position where we are the bad guy, and that can never end well.

Tonight I took the family to the drive inn for their first experience and my first in a good fifteen years. This drive in had screens fanned out in a circle establishing the rim of the place. As I scanned the various films, all of them silent except the feed to one pumping from the truck speakers, I realized something. All the films were following the same precise pattern to develop the opening moments of the story. In other words, all six films were taking the time to establish the world from the perspective of the viewer and of the characters we would be viewing. This is an often overlooked aspect of writing. We build a world and we either want to talk about it or talk about the people in it, but rarely does this happen in context with new writers.

By context I mean showing the rules of the world in a way that pertains to how the character is presently interacting with the world. The rules of the world impact us every day. I cross at the crosswalk because I know doing otherwise might set me up to get smacked by a car. If I were to write this world building moment I would show me crossing as another person crosses inappropriately and I would take notice of them as they narrowly avoid a car or interrupt traffic–which can also show how a person is self-centered vs. someone who wants to blend in as a rule follower.

The best writing is that which strikes a cord in the reader–a moment where the reader gets what you are saying and is able to reference/connect it to moments in their own existence. World building is bridge building, because you are building a bridge of understanding between your world and wherever the viewers come from and wherever they keep their emotions.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I heard someone today (a commercial I think) argue about how we ought to keep dreaming when we are adults and not give up on the hope that we can be anything we want to be. It resonated with me because I think people do give up all too quickly. At the same time I think we all need to be a lot more honest about our skills and where we are at in the world. I’m a mediocre teacher, an occasionally decent writer who doesn’t take the proper time the craft deserves, and someone who vacillates between having his head stuck in the clouds and into too many projects/schemes to be truly effective at any of them. There, how’s that for honest.
2. Okay, that felt freeing, but now what?