Rats (behind the scenes)

I posted the short story Rats a little while back, and now I’d like to share some of the “behind the scenes” stuff behind it. My motivation for doing this is because I find it interesting, and so maybe you will too, and maybe we can inspire each other.

Rats is a short story responding to the prompt “you are the victim of injustice” on TheProse.com, where I originally posted the story. Not for the first time, I was inspired by the amazing Kazuo Ishiguro, and specifially, by the notion of approaching the concept an alternative world a little bit differently.

So that was the first impulse, or piece of inspiration, if you like.

The second was a video I’ve seen where the experience of a refugee child is portrayed using a white child actress, thereby brilliantly confronting the idea of “us” and “them”, forcing Westerners to take in a) that all humans are alike, and b) that it could so easily have been us. The world could have looked different. Indeed, the world might look different in the future.

This idea fascinated me. It may not surprise you to hear that I support the statement “Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.”

And so I decided to go with the idea that the East grows to become the new super power, whereas the West diminishes and becomes poor, factories now being built in the West just like right now, they are in the East, because that’s where cheap labour is.

There is also a historical reference within Rats, namely the factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh in 2013. I have visited Bangladesh once, and met the people there, and I have Bangla friends. They might as well have been Westerners, in some senses, but they live in a country which is extremely poor, which has an incredibly corrupt government, and which is exploited by international organizations. A large number of people lost their lives or were fatally wounded in that building collapse. But who talks about it now? And though “conscious fashion” is a growing trend I wholeheartedly support, it remains true that most people go shopping without it even crossing their minds who made these clothes, and whether they were exploited, or what we can do to better their working conditions and pay.

I am by no means a very structured writer who has a strict plan and writes from the beginning to the end making no detours. Indeed, I am a very messy writer who constantly shuffles things about and tweaks them, thinking of stories as pieces of clay that I can mould into whatever shape I like. What I’ve been talking about before, then, is not so much the short story itself, but the impulses behind the idea. In summary: they are these three:

• The idea of approaching an alternative world differently
• The refugee child video campaign challenging the “them/us” idea
• The factory collpase in Bangladesh i 2013

Now we get to the short story, about which I don’t have that much to say. I wrote it quickly – those of you who are writers will know that some stories seem to write themselves.

The factory collapse in Rats happen right by the Thames in London, which was my attempt at turning things on their head, enganging with the idea “them” and “us”, by actually swapping the geographical locations and cultures that provided the setting for the factory collapse. But I didn’t want to linger on this for too long. Inspired by Ishiguro, I wanted the world of the story to simply be, and to focus on what was happening with my characters and in their lives – as they experienced it, not as you or I would.

The protagonist is a regular woman, in most ways. A Londoner recognizable in some ways, but whose world is in many aspects strikingly different from the way we know it. When catastrophe happens, she becames the newspaper cover girl, the face of the disaster, who has to deal with exactly the same problems as we do, in the real world, except from an opposite point of view.

She wants and desires change, but history’s message is not encouraging, and she fears that the Westerner’s roles as “rats” will mean that the disaster will soon be forgotten in the East. But in the woman’s own life, the disaster will in all probability cripple the entire family, because the media and the wealthy people of the world, only care for as long as their attention span lasts.

I wonder if some people might accuse me of writing for the sake of a “moral message”. Actually, I don’t, certainly not on purpose. I think my inclination is to attempt to get people to think more, and to step out of their own shoes and into somebody else’s.

Movie of the Day

About ten years ago, I invented a creative writing exercise called “Movie of the Day”.

Well, I say “invented”. Really, I don’t remember quite how it started, and I dare say there are many variations of this exercise round and about. What I remember is why it started: with the fear of running out of ideas, or forgetting how to make up stories. Or, more precisely, fear of ever becoming intimidated at the prospect of starting a new story.

My creative writing exercise is not intended to produce great things. I think that’s important to stress, because the pressure we put on ourselves to create amazing things can become so much we don’t even start. This exercise, then, is simply intended to keep the imagination at work, making you actively engaging in creating a story.

I’m a picky movie-watcher known to walk out from family movie nights – for the simple reason that some idea had popped into my mind, that interested me much more than the movie. Numerous times I’d be scanning the shelves of DVD’s in my parents’ house (how sad to think the era of DVD’s might be fast approaching an end), finding nothing at all that I wanted to watch. And that, I think, is where this exercise really started – as I asked myself: What are the ingredients of a movie I would want to watch?

In periods, I’d do this once a day, minimum. I’d open my notebook, and write down any and all elements I’d like to see in a movie.

An example of a page like this would be:

Old china cutlery. Loft. Dusty caught in sunlight. Raspy voice. Maybe someone who’s lost their voice (why would that matter? why is her voice important.) No squeaky clean, unrealistic apartments – mess, life, the oddness of the ordinary. The real world-ish, but not quite. Something’s off. What could that be? Also: Drums. A really good, riveting beat, like enormous drums.

And then I’d work from there.

Another way I do it is I pick five interesting images with no obvious correlation, and force myself to somehow create a story using those elements.

Or I’d draw.

I’ve always drawn freehand. Before I ever fell in love with words, I loved storytelling through imagery. My gateway into loving stories was actually cartoons drawn by old masters, such as Hal Foster and André Franquin. I’ve always drawn people, wondering who they are and what their stories are, approaching it a bit like people-watching, really.

I might be writing into an empty void right now, but I hope that with time, more and more writers and story-lovers will happen upon my little corner of the internet. But anyway, I drew this drawing in order for others to participate in exactly what I have just described: to make up a new story.

Within this piece of art, there are numerous elements for you to explain, explore, and piece together. There is the three girls. Who are they? Where are they from and what is their background? Have they known each other for a long time? What has happened to them? Where are they? Are they far from home, or close? What’s going on outside the frames of this picture? What are they talking about? Do they agree or disagree with one another?

And please, please let me know in the comments what you come up with – I’d love to know.

On a final note: Personally, I don’t know what this drawing really portrays. I don’t know if it’s a beginning, middle or end, and there is no “right answer” here. But I definitely have a skeleton of a story that has started to take shape.