Science and the Screenwriter.
I was gobsmacked when a few days ago I looked at the front page of the BBC News website and saw that a story about Twilight: Breaking Dawn had taken greater precedence over the recent findings from the CERN Labs that a neutrino had been recorded to have traveled faster than the speed of light. Just process that for a second: faster than the speed of light. This means that our fundamentals of physics will forever be changed, as will how we must empirically process the universe and creation itself. The claim is still being confirmed, but for now, this is big, monumental stuff.
Next stop - tachyons.
There have been numerous other discoveries in physics that have gone under the radar, but that have a profound impact on how we must view life as we know it. Recent studies in the creation of antimatter and our inching towards a state of absolute zero - the condition of thermodynamics wherein we reach ground state - makes the lay observer question things like what it means to exist.
Think about it - if a particle has a zero-point of stage of quantum mechanics, i.e. both potential and kinetic energy are zero, then can it be considered alive? We have had instances in biology that make us question this. A virus, while containing genetic information, is not really a living thing. It has no cellular functions, nor does it have the basic physiology of a single celled organism. It is merely a protein coat that houses a genetic code. It lives by injecting its DNA into a host organism, which replicates inside the cell and then explodes, releasing more viruses. It is therefore neither alive or dead - it is something inbetween, and we’ve yet to give a name for this. It is a zero-point entity.
As I write the next screenplay for my Paul Pope project, I find myself turning to science to explain the characters’ motivations. I initially did this because Paul’s story is a work of science fiction - anyone who has read any of Paul’s graphic novels knows that he has a predilection for science. My first rule for writing science fiction is that there must be governing laws within the universe that must be explained by a scientific phenomenon, be it fictional or real. For almost two months I’ve been reading about quantum mechanics and cellular functions to give a real-life grounding to the phenomena in Paul’s story. I eventually did formulate my sciences in this fictional world, but in doing so I also unlocked a powerful new tool in seeing plot and character.
Paul Pope and science fiction are a marriage made in heaven. And no, we’re not making a THB film. Announcement coming soon.
In asking the classic Mamet question of what does a character want, and what happens when they don’t get it, I started to think of this question in terms of quantum physics. I did this because Mamet’s question is in reference to motion - it is, in many ways, a conversion of potential energy (the thought) into kinetic (the action / reaction). The main characters all have their motivations, but one character in Paul’s book exists in a gray area. The character isn’t well-developed in the story, so I’ve been given the green light to really build up who this person is. And I turned to physics for it.
We see it all the time in science fiction and horror, where a character magically appears and disappears from our consciousness. Think of Freddy Krueger or the biomechanical alien in Alien. There is a dream logic applied to it, but I think it can be explained in a greater term of physics. Why is it that a monster of the mind is always ten steps ahead of us, and that they are able to manifest themselves at any given point, but we cannot pin them down? It can be explained by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which implies that it is impossible to simultaneously measure the present position while also determining the future motion of a particle, or of any system small enough to require quantum mechanical treatment. In essence, the minute we ascertain the position of one phenomena, it is impossible to measure future phenomena because it has already moved on. There is no present moment, because the future has already happened and continues to happen.
Take a bite of an apple. The millisecond our brain registers the apple is a moment of the past. That bite already happened, and we’ve already moved beyond that. Now think of Freddy Krueger. He is, essentially, a manifestation of fear. He registers in our head as a moment of terror, but as a particle manifestation he has already moved on. As long as we remain fixated on comprehending the position we last saw him in, he can freely move on to be ten steps ahead of us. He is, in many ways, in our inevitable future at all times.
So how do you stop a creature that’s always ahead of you? It’s another quantum physics solution, which is Schrödinger’s Cat. The basis of Schrödinger’s Cat is where a cat is placed into a box with a poison and a radioactive substance, and the box is closed. There is a 50/50 chance that an isotope will release the poison and kill the cat. But we don’t know if the cat is alive or dead until we look in the box. At this moment, the cat is existing on two planes - it is, for a brief moment, both alive and dead. Like Freddy.
But the solution to this is to simply open the box and find out if the cat is either alive or dead, and not both live and dead. So to defeat Freddy, one must open the lid and expose his true state - It’s too late, Krueger. I know the secret now. This is just a dream. You’re not alive. This whole thing is just a dream.
One can see now how we can build plot points based on quantum physics, and we know it will work because these are the fundamentals of motion. And what is storytelling but the unveiling of a timeline, film but a continuum, characters but a conversion?
Understanding science, and more so having a natural curiosity for it, is a gift to the screenwriter because not only does it allow us to fundamentally unlock mysteries on a molecular / subatomic particle level, but it allows us to create mystery using the grander forces that govern our existence. It’s been said that the writer is playing God, creating universes in her mind. If this is so then she must understand the forces she is playing with, and she will be the ultimate puppeteer. I love this approach to screenwriting, because once I figure out my internal laws of existence, I can play within those parameters and make anything happen, and it will always make sense because it is based on universal truths. My screenplay won’t be riddled with scientific explanations (unlike this post), but it will operate by them, and they will present both obstacles and solutions that are very real.
I know what you’re thinking - this is paralysis by analysis, overthinking something that should be free and organic. I argue though that my scientific research for this project is merely research and groundwork, it is not the writing itself. We all have to do research before writing something - this is absolutely required. Our definition of what constitutes research is different for every writer. For some it is going out in the field and living the experiences of the characters first-hand. I feel every writer should do this to some extent, or at least interview and befriend people who have lived through those experiences to get an honest account of what it means to live that life. For other writers, research is simply reading books and watching movies, which is also required but is also limiting, because you are confining yourself to the observations of others. The best solution is therefore a combination of both, where we read and collect, and then bounce that knowledge off of real life. What emerges is a unique perspective, and when this perspective collides with our worldview and personal philosophy, it is then that we create a highly personal, highly truthful story.
I embrace physics, biology and mathematics because I love them, but also because it is a way for me to figure out the worlds I create in my head. It gives shape and tangibility to my dreams. It fuels my curiosity to learn more, to possibly discover a new, alien way of thinking. It is like being Steven Hawking or Carl Sagan and looking out into the stars, and admitting that we still know nothing, but that the information we have is the gateway to discovering the new horizon. We need to have that sense of exploration, of discovery, of wonderment. And we need it in everything we do, not just storytelling. We tell stories with the hope of revealing something new and profound about us, about the human condition. Paintings and music reveal truths that are buried deep within us that we previously had no way of expressing. They are forging the new frontier of our psychological landscape. We can unlock the universe with our words, images, motions and sounds. But we have to get our foot in the door first, and that’s what research will do. So do it well, do it right, and do it because our hearts desire to unlock the mysteries of our own being. If that’s not exciting, then I don’t know what is.
