Working Backwards

Just a quick post related to something I mentioned last time.

I wrote:

By determining what conflicts Esther is facing, we can work backwards to work out how her motivation works in this story.

I realised that this might sound slightly strange. After all, a character's motivation supposed to be the most important thing for a writer to determine ... doesn't it make sense to figure THAT out first?

When I'm working on scripts and stories, I often work backwards to ensure that everything from motivation to conflict to plot points all works as a coherent whole before I start writing. Plenty of other writers do it the other way around, but I like to have the whole package in my mind and in my notes before I start the actual draft. It's just the way that I work best, especially in a case like this.

Since Xerxes Atlas is an adaptation, it has to remain relatively faithful to the original text. Working backwards from the details and themes in the Book of Esther is the only way to ensure that the character arcs are satisfying while also remaining true to the source.

Plus, it's fun!

Esther's motivation

In my last post I talked about the challenges in adapting the Book of Esther to make Xerxes and Esther the protagonists instead of Mordecai and Haman. In this post, I'll delve into how to face some of those challenges.

One of the questions the Xerxes Atlas crew raised after reading through the first batch of pitches from writers was what Esther's motivation is given her circumstances.

"Why does she do what she does? On the surface it seems unrealistic..."

Esther does basically two things in this story: first she wins Xerxes' heart, and second she eventually convinces him to counteract Haman's law and spare the Jews. These are not just reasonable things to do given her situation, they are basically essential to her survival. So why is it that on the surface what Esther does seems unrealistic?

I think the problem is not that audience will question Esther's choices, but that they will question whether she had a choice at all. In the original text, things happen to Esther because a). she is beautiful (being taken to Xerxes harem, becoming queen), and b). Mordecai tells her to do things (reporting the assassination, foiling Haman's plot). This means her character in the original text is basically static. The only choice we see her struggling with is whether or not to approach Xerxes to plead the plight of the Jews, and even that choice seems pre-ordained -- if she did nothing, she would be no worse than Haman himself.

If what happens to Esther rings slightly false, it's because her story seems too easy, too devoid of real conflict. In the original story we never get to see what Esther wants, or how she feels about her captivity, her marriage or her Jewish heritage. In reality, she would have felt conflicted about all of these things.

So...

In order to make the story seem realistic, we must see that conflict alive in Esther.

By determining what conflicts Esther is facing, we can work backwards to work out how her motivation works in this story!

More soon.

Esther in the Bible

The Book of Esther tells a terrific story. It's about a common girl with a secret heritage who wins the heart of the king and becomes his queen. It's about the clash between a lowly righteous man and an exalted wicked one. It's about an arrogant king who gains wisdom through love. But most of all, it is about salvation coming from unlikely places.

A very cool book. The Jewish holiday Purim is based around the events in Esther, and it's even got a wikipedia portal.

In many ways, Esther is a great source for a musical. It is full of archetypical characters and classic themes, and crucially for a musical, there are a lot of feasts and parties! However, there are a few issues in the original text which must be addressed in order to retell the story in a way that will be compelling on stage.

The original treatment for Xerxes Atlas presents the story as a romance, which is a good instinct and I think the right direction for the project. However, the Biblical text isn't really a love story in a way that modern audiences can easily relate to. In the book, Xerxes and Esther only see each other in very formal circumstances, and after their initial meeting we don't see them together until much later, when he has not sought out her presence in over a month and she is afraid to approach him on the penalty of death! It's not exactly a Cinderella story.

In fact, Esther and Xerxes are not really the focus of the Book of Esther. The text is more concerned with the battle between Haman and Mordecai, and how Mordecai eventually triumphs with Esther's help, despite Haman's dastardly plans. It's this victory which Purim celebrates.

However, in our play, Haman and Mordecai are secondary characters while Esther and Xeerxes are the leads. This follows a more conventional structure for a fairy tale or love story, but also provides the benefit of protagonists the audience can relate to, since Haman and Mordecai are more or less one-dimensional characters: their fortunes change throughout the story, but their attitudes and dispositions stay mostly the same throughout. Using Esther and Xerxes as our leads provides more room for character development.

The trick is working that character development into the framework of an existing story. More on that in the next post.

Welcome!

The world's first wiki-musical will be a project called Xerxes Atlas, based on the Biblical book of Esther, with songs developed through an open-source process. I'm very excited about this project, and I am bidding on a chance to write the script. This blog will chronicle my process of developing material for Xerxes Atlas as I develop my proposal.