Anonymous

A Story a Day
2004-09-08 11:13:40 (UTC)

the aesthetic

6:46am
i don't know why i'm up. i can't sleep. but i'm trying to
work on this outline and somehting's not fitting. it's not
a story in the style i like to tell stories. it's too,
teen-drama right now. i have to build the world as a sick
and deafining roar all aroudn these two characters. and i
need to create two creatures of unrivaled fragility and
almost animal desires. they can't be these grim
potificating depressed lomlucks that inhabit the WB, they
have to be human beings at their absolute ugliest. they
have to have the worst characteristics of any man or woman
alive and they have to have been created from this world.
how do i do that? how do i tap into an essentual and
singular aesthetic without stepping on cliches or falling
into neurotic block? someone once said that my writing was
the stuff of horror movies, if there wasn't so much romance
in every line. everything i write is about love and fear.
everything i want to focus on is love and fear. where do i
start?

these characters are young, but not too young. they're 25.
it's about the time most people start focusing on finding
that one. that person. it's also young enough for him to
harbor old grievances with this girl. they will get him to
start his giant con. but what does a 25 year old failure
look like? what does someone with the world on his
shoulders do differently than everyone else? is fantasy too
far to go for this asthetic? could i make this man living
in an apartment teetering on the edge of a cliff? could i
make everyday raining, every padestrian vicious and mongrel?
could i make it a nightmare world? i think to an extent i
can. but part of this story is already so weird to make it
weirder would just confuse everyone, including myself. i
feel compelled to return to the mundane colors and settings
of the post-millenium universe i live in currently. how
boring. how worthless.

okay, i think a couple of things have to be secured. first,
everyone in his and her world has to be lying at all times.
every statement mujst be false on many levels. this is not
terribly difficult to do, because people lie so much anyway,
but it has to be truely overwelming and nightmarish. if he
lives in such a world of lies, i can show how to create one
is only natural and in some ways unavoidable.

second, i think these two have to be extremely morose and
for all purposes complete failures at everything until this
lie. the love that he asks for at the end of the film
already has enough going against it that i need to build
some realistic case for the love alternative. they have to
be bad at relationships, bad at jobs and money, bad at being
grown ups, bad at being kids, bad at being themselves, bad
at each other. they have to be the fucking two biggest
losers in the world. this will make them relatable.

third, their fantasy life has to encompase both the lie and
and love. in fact, the love cannot exist without the lie.
the fantasy reality they create together must be so good
that to break it at the end would be unthinkable. so their
fate is ultimately sealed from the beginning. the boat has
no choice but to sink.

fourth, the way he tells the story has to balance a few
plates. first, it has to be a first person confession to
another person who's listening. second it has to be
disjointed enough that the revelation that cross and bath
are in fact the same person doesn't occur until the 1/3rd
point. third, the story must include not only the couple's
pathetic past experiences, but their future as well.
through this i hope to paint a picture of what could be, if
she in fact forgives him and what could be lost if she
doesn't. and finally the telling must include both her and
his prospective, because as he attempts halfway through to
tear down the character and reveal more of himself, she is
building the character and falling in love with it.




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