Action!
By seyi river
I am often asked how the story for One Hit Wonder came about. The inspirations for the story are manifold and diverse but a couple of them are worthy of mention.
The first is the millennia-old seven hundred verse Hindu text the Bhagavad-Gita, in which a trepidatious warrior-prince, Arjuna, rides his chariot to an epic battle against his cousins after his family (Pandava) and theirs (Kaurava) have failed to agree upon who should assume the throne to the kingdom.
This will be no ordinary battle, for on the opposing side are not only his cousins, but also close friends and teachers. Arjuna is being forced to wage a bloody campaign against his loved ones.
As he looks out to the battlefield and the mighty armies assembled, Arjuna’s dejection and foreboding grow exponentially. He protests to his charioteer and teacher the god Krishna, about the senselessness of the carnage about to happen. He lays his weapons down and makes the decision to quit.
Krishna’s reaction is swift, he counsels:
Why this cowardice
in time of crisis, Arjuna?
The coward is ignoble, shameful,
foreign to the ways of heaven.
Don’t yield to impotence!
It is unnatural in you!
Banish this petty weakness from your heart.
Rise to the fight, Arjuna!
And thus, throughout the text, Krishna lays out the case for why going through with this battle is the highest noble choice and the only one Arjuna should make. The battlefield is an allegory for life. Do we act, can we afford not to? Is inaction not itself a form of action?
PS: I am not a Hindu, just a fan of the sublime and powerful text in the translation by Barbara Stoler Miller - which in my opinion is itself a work of art (my ripped copy pictured above).
The second inspiration comes from my experience as a creator — ideas and characters often jostle in the mind to be granted preferred status on the creative schedule. It is a constant mental barrage of “stuff” demanding first choice and action, all with consequences and outcomes, one of which is potential failure. You can’t do it all, so choice followed by action becomes the central determining factor to execution.
In One Hit Wonder, the protagonist Adam is going through a personal life-altering battle after receiving a devastating review for his second book. His first was a world class hit. Having fallen so far, will Adam take action to remedy the setback or is the blow too intense and is he satisfied to be a one hit wonder?
