Inspiration and Ender's Game

The best stories always incorporate and use what came before them, they steal and borrow from other stories, media, texts, myths and legends to make something completely new and original.  Much like (other) products of Nature, a story is the product of pre-existing stories, materials and building blocks that came before them.  When joined in holy matrimony, they produce something new and original. 

In the DNA of every story (“the meaning”) is all that has come before it, just like in every person is the billions of years of evolution that came before them.   The right parent ideas put together can create something better than the original parts. 

 “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal”  -- T. S. Eliot, 1920

“All good writing has stolen from writing which came before it.”  It’s an axiom that goes back to ancient times -- when people mostly copied books that came before them.  Shakespeare stole (perhaps everything), and people have been stealing from him ever since.  It extends back to Egypt and beyond…

The universal themes of love, death, life, and what it means to be human, what it means to know and understand.  What is God?  What is Love?

Why are we here?  What is the meaning of our life, and of life in general?

Legends always build upon prior legends.  The allegory and truth at the center of the legend makes it stand the test of time, and resonate with us.  What we like about stories, movies and ideas (what sells as those in Hollywood say), what makes them good is that we know them already, and yet by consuming them we get something we did not have before.  Ideally, an enjoyable experience, entertainment, but sometimes, when done just right and all the stars align, you get inspiration, people steal from you, and you join the pantheon of legends and stories.

“The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.”  (Ender’s Game)

In writing my first novel “Pharaoh”, I applied this principle, by building my Science Fiction story on top of the legend of Alexander the Great, and the Pharaoh legends he built his Hellenic empire upon (see #PharaohNovel).   Still in the thick of writing my first edition of ‘Pharaoh’, I tend to see everything through the prism of the story.   As a novelist I am always looking for good stories to draw inspiration from, and I am always interested in a good story.  And why it’s good, and why it resonates with me and others.

While watching “Ender’s Game” I thought:  This film is a great metaphor for many things, but the first thing that came to my mind was the character of Ender as ‘Alexander the Great’ and his meteoric rise to the top of the world, his genius of military power – he became a regent and military commander at the age of 16 -- but he also had a deep reverence for the cultures he conquered, Egypt and Persia.  Alexander the Great had conquered the known world before he was 25 years old.   Ender’s Game has many parallels to the legend of Alexander the Great, which for me made it that much more interesting and intriguing.

“At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: The End of the World. He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.”

Going into watching Ender’s Game I purposefully didn’t know much about it.  I had seen commercials and billboards.  I knew that the movie was a based on a Sci-Fi novel written in 1985, and that Harrison Ford was in it.  I knew nothing about the author, or the details of the story – I went in fresh as I call it.  I had seen blips about the film on Twitter, but not enough to know what to expect.  I enjoyed the movie much more than I thought I would.  I thought it came together very well.  It certainly helps to have solid source material – a good story.

There are a lot of parallels between the movie “Ender’s Game” and the screenplay ‘Pharaoh’ that I wrote.  I think it’s because both stories tap some of the same source material and ideas; they seek to answer the same questions.  This is what drew me to it I think.

I ordered the novel this morning.  The movie made me want to read the book.

It’s my dream to write a novel that inspires me the way I have been inspired.

“You remember this little boy, they never tell you any more truth than they have to.”

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First edition coming in 2013!