The Inner Editor
That dude is a total jerk, no? He’s a like an over-weight creative director, with a bristling mustache who’s always invading your space. Never overt though, he’s insidious and sinuous, like a viper, with gold and black eyes, comes a twisting and hissing through your favorite writing spot. You hear the soft rasping of dry, hard scales before your see it.
And once you see it, can’t stop it. Gleaming neon patterns and purple smoke, my inner editor comes as a cobra, hooded and sleek, swaying gently whispering things like “that’s the plot from a TV show in the 70’s” and “you stole that from a comic you read when you were eleven.”
Maybe your inner editor is a python, fat and stale, it’s reptilian muscle coils slow around chest, squeezing the forward motion of your plot from you mind, your fingers go numb, limbs lose their grace and will. He weighs heavy upon your creative spirit.
Yeah, the inner editor is a total douche-bag. I have a theory about writers, drug abuse and the inner editor. It’s that warm-tummy oblivion that makes a glass of whiskey while you write so appealing, eh? We’d have to talk to some of the more famous writers of yore, I suppose, to prove my point. And, in our prim and politically correct world, I doubt writers are too willing to spill their secrets.
Anyhow, the inner editor, though occasionally offering legit advice, for the most part is a malfunctioning part of the creative psyche. Someone once said, “Young writers invent, successful writers steal.” While I don’t condone plagiarism, I want to point out that humans have been on this planet for a long time. For approximately 40,000 years, we’ve been telling each other stories. I think we’re going to get some over lap.
Everyone knows the Magnificent Seven, right? Come on, Yul Brynner, 1960? Well, that’s a knock off of The Seven Samurai (you know that, right? Kurasawa?). To take it one step further, (or to nerd out for one more level) that’s a knock of Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus 5th cent. BCE).
Oh yes, all your favorite plots are recycled myths and legends.
Allow me to further “bake your noodle.” The recent film The Mist had the exact same plot as 30 Days of Night, Dawn of the Dead and Aliens.
Check it out: Mosnters attack. Protagonists hold up for a time in a safe zone. Then, after some internal strife and debate, decide to move on, risking all. In all cases, the protagonists decision to act costs them everything they were working to preserve. Swap zombies for aliens for bugs for vampires for damned mutant tacos. Now these movies, on the surface were very different. But the plot points were identical.
Does that lessen the validity of any one of them? I can’t answer that in a mere blog. You’ll have to tune into my book “Friends, Survivor and Edgy Cop shows: All art suffers because of our collective bad taste.”
But I can say, if Kurasawa had listened to his inner editor and had never made the Seven Samurai, then perhaps Yul Brynner would never have starred in Westworld. And I for one believe that without Yul Brynner (much like David Bowie) the universe as we know it would cease to exist.
