Deeper Meaning

Scripts are written and movies are made for a number of reasons: entertainment is probably the most important/essential, but they are also written to educate, to inspire, to scare, to make the audience laugh, cry, think, and feel.

As much as I enjoy a good laugh and sitting on the edge of my seat, tense and rooting for the hero, I don't ever want to write a script that doesn't have a deeper purpose. The science fiction script I'm writing now isn't just about a young girl who has to live with her mother's memories in her head and must ultimately decide what to do with those memories. I want it also to be about something an audience can relate to. We watch movies, read books, write our own stories and we often feel like we're living different lives vicariously through those characters. But what we know in our minds and what we actually experience in our own lives are two different things. Wendy thinks she understands the world by remembering her mother's past life, but she really has no idea because she's never personally experienced those events. In Star Trek Episode Three, Dr. McCoy asks Spock what its like to die. Spock answers that he cannot have the conversation with the doctor because he has never died, and so he couldn't possibly know what its like based off of Spock's experience.

Then again, if something real comes from something fantastical, what of that? At the end of the script, in her mind, Wendy and Corryn have their first conversation. Corryn doesn't say much, but Wendy tells her that she forgives her. Wendy experiences closure in her mind, and even though the situation never really happened, Wendy is able to move on. In the Matrix, Morpheus claims, "The mind makes it real." I want readers to ask, is this true? Can our mind really make things real? Wendy's answer would be yes, while Jenn would say no. One thing is for sure. Scientists still don't know what the mind is completely capable of. I watched a video about quantum mechanics where the scientist said if we focus our mind on something strong enough, we can make it happen. This is only a theory, but perhaps one day, we will know just how powerful the mind can be.

Long Road Ahead

My big problem, now that I've done most of the research and tackled the technical issues, is getting the story to flow correctly. I'm completely against flashbacks, so I'm trying my best to have a parallel story between Corryn's past life and Wendy's life now, especially since a lot of Corryn's past is being mixed in and confusing Wendy's present. I'm also trying to create suspense in the beginning and up to the end of the first act, but I'm wondering if I'm giving too much (or not enough) information away. Therefore, I feel like this first draft is going to be messy. But as long as I get it written, I'm confident that the rewrites will bring the story together and enhance the character development.

Forgetting is Important

I was thinking about Wendy's problem in the middle of the script where she begins to forget her mother's memories. I started doing research on forgetting, and theories show that it's just as important as remembering for our brains.

What would life be like if we didn't forget? There a book called "The Woman Who Can't Forget," and her brian couldn't handle all of the information. She would constantly get headaches. She would always be stressed out. The mind creates room by storing information in long term memory and losing information that isn't relevant over time.

These are the youtube videos I found on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbiTuDSHa2M and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbiTuDSHa2M. The second youtube video uses a quote, "The strength of your mind dictates the size of your reality." The quote refers to the movie, Momento.

As I've written before, most of our memories are recalled by remembering the process in which we stored these memories into our brains. (That's confusing, let me try again.) If I'm taking a test and I'm trying to remember what I studied, I first remember that I was sitting at my desk, searching through my book, looking up a certain passage, and finally I remember what was inside the book. Through our experiences, we can remember information. WELL, since Wendy was given this information and she didn't actually learn it or experience it HERSELF, then I believe it's plausible for her to forget the memories of her mother and the information attached to those memories because they aren't hers. As Wendy goes through her own experiences, her mind has to create room, and so the more she learns through her own eyes, the less she remembers about her mother. (Now I have an explanation, though it's probably not the best one.)

Even More Changes

I love talking to people about idea. It's so much nicer than debating with myself.

After a discussion with my dad, aka Arthur C. Clark (you'd get the reference if you read an earlier post of mine), I think I answered the big question...how the hell would an experiment like this work? The answer, as my dad pointed out (I didn't even recognize it), is that humans learn and remember information much easier when they are children, which is why learning a language is much easier at an early age rather an adult attempting to learn a language. It also came to my attention that genetics are involved in an experiment like this. The trick is to make information instinct.

Here's another interesting thing. What if Corryn HAD to transfer this information because she's already dying? Corryn has no other choice but to do the experiment on her own daughter (she hasn't gotten clearance yet to do it on anything else but lab rats). After Wendy is born, she's about four years old, Corryn does the experiment. A year later, Corryn dies. Nikki raises Wendy and Wendy starts showing genius signs at five years old. At age 7, she's ready for college.

And now I'm finally ready to start writing.

Research

These are a few websites I found to help me figure some things out.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=211017

This website deals with asking what if it's possible to connect two brains together and what would happen. It isn't exactly dealing with the experiment I'm using for my script, but it discusses NEUROPHYSICS. This is the type of science Dr. Berke in my script should know a lot about in order to be able to put together an experiment that sends information from one brain to another.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=211017

This website discusses how our memory works, how the brain keeps our memories separate, and how we are able to access our memories. One of my questions is, if Corryn wants to send information she has stored in her memory, is it possible to do this WITHOUT sending her personal memories as well? If our brain keeps these memories separate, would she be able to choose which memories to send? This message board talks about a neuron sends information to another neuron, but it goes through branches of neurons before it hits it's target neuron that is supposed to receive the information. It also says, "Wasn't there some research that came out not long ago (maybe a year or two max) that showed that we don't "read" memories, we recall them by the brain recreating thoughts, feelings, emotions, smells etc we had at the time--And so in this way isn't analogous to "reading" a hard drive like a computer does?" If this is true, then maybe Corryn HAS to send her personal memories, because the way in which she remembers information could be the same way Wendy can then access it...by remembering how Corryn recalled information. Website goes into more depth on this idea on page 2...when we remember, we don't read the memories, we "do" them, meaning we relive them.

Something else I thought about today. She would have had to test this experiment many times before putting her daughter in the chair. I'm wondering how these past experiments have gone and what she learned. You can't ask a rat if it remembers personal experiences of another rat. You just transfer the information (a rat determines how to get from one part of the maze to another) to another rat that has never done the maze before (and this rat knows exactly how to get to the end of the maze in one shot).

Simple is Better

After the third time trying to explain to someone my script idea and getting the same confused reaction, I realized there's too much going on in this script. A sci-fi mixed with a sad dramatic drama isn't going to work. So here's how it's looking now.

I thought about what kind of person would use their daughter for an experiment with dangerous consequences. This person would have to be crazy, a mad scientist, which could actually work. I've been focusing so much on the story that I'm not paying enough attention to the characters, who could make or break this idea. I decided tell the story in a way that is more about the characters and less about the whole mind uploading process.

Research shows that long term memory (memories about the past and information we can remember) can all be found in the hippocampus), so the simple part of the story is that Corryn transfers her long term member to her daughter. As her daughter grows up, things begin to trigger these memories. When Wendy realizes her mother conducted the experiment, she becomes resentful, BUT there's more to the story than the experiment.

This story is really going to be about understanding. We think we know people all the time from our observations, but actually seeing what they see can change our opinions dramatically. Wendy is given this gift of seeing and feeling what Corryn saw and felt. Wendy can actually remember the emotional trauma Corryn underwent when her parents told her she was an embarrassment and weird. She learns why Corryn has no morals and why she pushes people away. This doesn't make Corryn a good person, but it allows Wendy to understand why she was the way she was by seeing life as Corryn saw it. This allows Wendy to make the decision to continue her mother's work, and when Wendy realizes Corryn's memories have completely taken over her mind, she stops everything and let's the experiment die. Wendy learns why Corryn has no morals, but that doesn't mean Wendy has to forget her own morals.

This experiment gives Wendy the chance to know her mom, and it has an emotional impact on Wendy when the memories begin to fade (in the same way a person forgets the image of their parents who have been dead for many years). In this version of the story, Wendy doesn't die. It's about learning and letting go without the added drama. Plain and simple, in a sci-fi way.

Fringe Team

I now have a team of biology/neuroscience/engineer majors on call for any questions I might have during the writing process. They've already been helpful with the outlining. They've been warned that I'm going to throw some pretty absurd questions their way, but they are prepared and excited to assist.