This is why a storyteller should be paid handsomely for entertaining you

As a storyteller, a screenwriter for that matter, I deserve to be paid very handsomely. Readon:

Right now I am almost finishing a screenplay. I have reached this scene where my characters are driving from town A to town B, at night. The person being driven, male, lays back and gets lost in thought. He starts thinking about his girlfriend, how they had video calls, dinner nights, play by the beach, and some good sex.

Him being lost in thought bothers the lady driver, who reminds him that as a passenger his key role is to keep the driver awake, lest the driver falls asleep and veers off the road. Her complain leads to a discussion about the much love the passenger has for his newly found girlfriend. The lady tries to tell him that no, the girlfriend probably doesn’t love him back. Maybe she is just after his money, as, after all, where they met (Tinder) is a place where slayqueens go to find sponsors. The discussion turns to be about the lady driver who apparently doesn’t believe in love because she got dumped by her college boyfriend.

As the the love-is-real vis a vis love-does-not-exist discussion heats up, from nowhere their vehicle starts getting sprayed with bullets, forcing the lady to step on the gas and to swerve. The bullets won’t stop coming. The male passenger reaches for his gun at the back of the SUV and after a lot of fire exchange between him and the rear vehicle, he finally manages to contain the situation by killing whoever is in the rear vehicle.

My problem is, I absolutely have no idea who was shooting at them. Is it some bad guy? Yes the story has bad guys who would really love to have the two killed, but the bad guys have absolutely no idea where the two are, and no immediate means of knowing where they could be. Is it the police? But why would the police just start firing at someone instead of attempting to arrest them first?

The thing is, the story was flowing very nicely until my brain decided to introduce a puzzle I have no easy way of solving. My second problem is that when I am writing, I can never move forward until I have solved a puzzle, puzzles that I normally create without warning. Most times the puzzles takes a few hours to solve, but big puzzles like this one can take weeks, or even months, before I can get to solving them. It is only after I have figured out a solution that I can continue with the story. That means right now I am stuck, and that’s why I am writing this piece.

I am not the only storyteller who most times doesn’t know where the story can go. One of the most celebrated screenwriter and director, Quentin Tarantino, once said that he lets the story lead him to wherever the story wants to go. After I read that is when I realized that my story writing style is actually not that unique. You see many writers will tell you that you need to figure out your story (e.g. the plot) before you can start putting it down on paper. I work differently. Most times what I know is how the story begins but nothing else, and a few times I just know how the story ends; with absolutely no idea on how to begin it to thereafter let it lead me to the ending I have already figured out.

Back to solving puzzles and why you should pay to be entertained by a storyteller. When I arrive at a puzzle like the one I just created, I always take up an unplanned trip to some random town. I’ll for example just board a vehicle to Eldoret, Nyeri or wherever, and let my mind relax through the trip. A relaxed trip normally puts my brain to an easy thinking mode, and usually before the trip ends, I already have a solution to the puzzle. Then I can take a trip back home and continue with the writing. The trip itself normally cost me more than shs 1,000. Puzzles like these also explain why good stories take time to write … mostly more than six months.

Six months. Some other storyteller can take years. Six months to write a story someone can read in an hour or so. Six months of eating, paying rent, utility bills, and other expenses that ought to lead to human growth; so that in the next cycle I can give you a much better story to entertain yourself with.

Yet, if I manage to get the movie produced, someone will want to enjoy it without paying a dime. Come on, how is a storyteller going to make a living?

By the way, when is the government banning pirating of Hollywood movies? That shit is killing the local film industry like nothing else

See also: Hacking of MPESA it is