Playing God with Words

In 2003, when I was about 13 or so, I embarked on a quest of enlightenment. My mission? Watch all the movies on IMDB’s Top 250 Films of All-Time list.

This quest has had a key role in my personal, and eventually professional, development. My love for storytelling and storytellers wouldn’t be so profound if it wasn’t for this quest. But I do want to confess something. I didn’t really watch all 250. First, I was limited by access. Some of these movies were from the first half of the 20th century, which made them hard to find. Some were not in English, which also made them hard to find. And finally, I chose not to watch a few back then.

Which movies were in these ‘few’? Since this quest happened over the course of a couple years starting 16 years ago, I can only remember two titles: The Shawshank Redemption (1991), and 12 Angry Men (1957).  

Now, if you’ve seen either of those movies, you probably went all “are you serious, Lakshya? I thought you were a serious film-lover… tsk tsk…”

Before you unfollow me, let me explain why I didn’t watch these two movies back then.

I wanted to save the experience for later in live, for the moments where I am in dire need of inspiration and need to watch an epicly beautiful story.

I didn’t finish the last 100 pages of Most Harmless (the final book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series) for a similar reason. I just didn’t want the story to end. I stopped reading the book, and kept it away for a year. Then I picked it up when I felt ready, and read the whole book from front to back over a 12 hour period.

Anyway, coming back to the two movies. Why am I telling you about this now?

First, let me clarify one thing: just because I didn’t watch these movies, doesn’t mean I didn’t know what they were about or what the whole story was. I was being romantic, not ignorant.

That being said, here’s why I’m telling you this now - last night, after having the file on my hard drive since 2005, I finally watched 12 Angry Men.

Why? Because I was ready to experience it. And also because I needed to watch a well-written dramatic story that was based on a play to improve my writing.

Now, in case you haven’t seen the movie, let me give you a quick intro to it.

12 Angry Men is the story of 12 jurors (all men) who have to decide if an 18 year old boy should be given the death penalty in a murder case. The entire movie takes place in the Jury room, and is just one long, brilliant conversation between 12 people who are supposed to represent different facets of humanity at a given place in time. The movie starts off with a vote of 11 jurors voting for a guilty verdict, and only 1 juror (Juror #8) voting against. The rest of the movie sees the 12 men discuss the case from different points of view, all because that 1 juror said that he’d like to talk about it, that he wasn’t ‘sure’.

So, about 10 minutes into the movie, when the juror who votes for not guilty started talking, I asked myself a question: what if this character is God?

Which God? Possibly the one from the Bible (Old or New Testament) given the author’s background, the characters’ backgrounds, and the New York in the 1950s setting.

I do this quite often when I watch movies: I create questions and then I try to answer them myself, before the movie can answer them for me. I do this to figure out what the writer was thinking when he or she wrote a scene or made a certain decision with a character. It’s quite a fun exercise, and I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. It wasn’t until I started focusing on my writing skills that I realized I was teaching myself how to write by doing this every time I watched a good movie.

The goal isn’t to be ‘right’, but to be informed.

Anyway, this question was quite new for me, because very rarely in a movie do you wonder if one character is meant to be God. So I spent the rest of the movie-watching experience listening intently to everything the man said. And by the end of the movie, I concluded that there was a reasonable doubt for me to consider the possibility that this character was God.

Why? I’ll give you 3 quick reasons (you don’t have to have seen the movie to understand my reasoning):

#1: When asked about his job, he says he’s an architect. And if there was an job you could assign to the God from the Bible, it would be architect (given that he created the world in 6 days!).

#2: When one juror makes a simple remark about the other jurors in private to him, saying “Nice bunch of guys, right?”, Juror #8 replies, “They’re about the same as everyone else.” if I was God, I would say the same thing about my creations.

#3: He spends the entire movie being doubtful, not saying something is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. All he wants to do is listen to why the other 11 jurors think the way they do. If I was God, and I wanted to go have some fun observing my creations, I would pick do this too. Why? Because this room and this situation represents humanity at its best, its worst, and also its fairest.

I should probably admit to you at this point that this guide wasn’t supposed to be a review of or an essay about 12 Angry Men. What I just wrote above was the backstory to what I really wanted to talk about here: playing God with words.

When you create a story, you’re creating a tiny little universe that you control everything in. Most stories take place in the world we already inhabit, so as a storyteller you don’t need to worry about explaining that this story is happening on planet Earth where 7 billion people live and there’s cars and rain and love.

However, if you wanted to write a story set in the year 1748, or 2145, you would have to do some explaining about how that world works, right?

Or if your story was taking place on another planet or in an entirely different galaxy, then you have a lot of stuff to play God with.

But besides those scenarios, the stuff you get to control in pretty much character-based… and maybe, just maybe… some weather stuff.

My point is, your real superpower as a storyteller within your story’s universe is the ‘spark’ you create that leads to a character taking a certain action or decision.

Basically, when you start typing and making stuff up, you’re playing God with your words. You want to write a story about a 25 year old man who is looking for love, poof, you just created a person. You want to make that 25 year old meet a charming, beautiful, and intelligent 25 year old woman, poof, she now exists too. You want them to get married? Done. You want to see what happens when they fight? Type away. You realize half way through the story that it would be more interesting if this was a same-sex relationship story? No one can stop you.

In this world of words, you’re the only and all-powerful God.

However, that does come with some “rules”. Rules that you create, so no, I’m not taking away from God-abilities. While there can be very many bitty gritty rules depending on the story’s concept and execution, I’ll only focus on the first one, which is technically a choice.

Option A: Are you going to play God as an invisible non-human entity in the story?

Option B: Or are you going to put a character in the story who will play “God”?

For example, last week I told you about a story I wrote called One More Night With Isabel.

In that story, I only wanted to play a fly on the wall, and I wanted you to feel the same. You’re just there, listening to (and hopefully, visualizing) these two ex-lovers talk about their past, and come to terms with their present. I also then decided to literally play God when I revealed that one of the characters was already dead. This is an example of Option A.

However, in the case of 12 Angry Men, my argument is that one of the characters was written in by the writer to be the ‘voice of doubt’, someone who isn’t really a ‘real’ person, but is going ask the right question at the right time to get other characters to reveal what they are thinking or feeling.

I have yet to use Option B in one of my stories (that I know of). But can you think of any story from recent memory where it was used?

Here is the 3rd option that gets revealed sometimes, only sometimes, as a story progresses:

Option C: Are you going to make the audience feel like “God”?

(Option C can be used in combination with Option A or B!)

In the context of storytelling, what does it mean to even be God?

Three things actually.

Creation: you create the story and its characters

Decision: you design the flow and actions taken by the characters

Judgement: you decide what happens to everyone at the end

Here’s the thing about #3: you either do this one yourself, and let the audience ponder it on their own - OR - you can leave the story’s end... or even the character’s fates… ambiguous. And then let the audience pass the judgement and play God.

Imagine any story where you felt like you either didn’t get a definite answer, or found yourself thinking very strongly for or against a character or plot point. That feeling, where you judge the story, is kind of nice, isn’t it?

Why do we do any of this?

Well, I can tell you the answer I’ve come up with so far, and it pretty much only relates to my experience (because who else have I been in this life?).

We create these stories where we get to play God in different capacities because we are curious. Curious about what would happen if this happened, or if someone did that, or if someone else said that.

I know I’m not blowing any minds with that conclusion. But before I lose you, since this guide is almost over, let me ask you one question: what does this curiosity to see what happens remind you of?

Childhood.

Did I answer that too quickly?

When I was a kid, I wanted to touch everything. I wanted to press every button. I wanted to do many, many things. Why? Because why not!

But then adulthood happened. And with it, it brought rules. Do’s and don’ts. (and also right / wrong + good / bad which is primarily a positive thing).

Anyway, let’s get to the final conclusion.

When our childhood leaves us, we recreate it in our adult world by hiding it in our stories.

Because when we write, we’re back in the playground. Just being kids. Just being curious.

We play God with words because it keeps us childish. Takes us back to a time when we were truly free.

So the next time you start writing something, and you’re not sure about what to do next or you feel like something isn’t working right… just remember this.

This is your universe. You created it. You can do whatever you want.

So, what kind of God are you going to be?