Exposition isn’t talking
Story comes from actions, characters opinions about things (training, past experience, their acceptance or rejection of norms), observations of the environment, interactions with others both friendly and antagonistic. Stories are basically the experience of characters, whether we are supposed to resonate or feel discord. A character who we cannot fathom, whose motivations don't make sense, whose actions are inconsistent isn't going to engage us.
So, writing the novella is about seeing the world through the experience of characters, exposition can be very subtle, we don't need characters to explain what would be obvious to them. We receive their world by how characters act, speak, what they assume to be true or false. In books they are either thinking or talking to each other. A screenplay is going to be more about exposition via dialogue and descriptive observations, not so much about what characters are thinking.
Would an outline of the story help us know where to go? What do we need to know for the story to be followed, fully appreciated and when do we need to know? Are there surprises and how do they change what we've been thinking about characters, about the world?
We need to know that there have been multiple apocalypses. Just dropping vignettes was the previous approach. Plein Air Paintings of the current reality, then upgraded or mixed with micro stories like uplifted deer, smart money, Wall Street under water, etc. This could be thematic, these painting experiences. The fun of stealing from so many other stories, which says what? 1) homages, 2) this story is in the lineage of those stories, incorporates their DNA - their flavor and implications 3) those stories are known in this world and so this world is a parallel world, it could be our world. This parallel earth feeling is reinforced by familiar names and logos and so on.
What do we need to know?
That multiple apocalyptic tropes have been deployed, maybe more yet to come? City suburbia already pretty decimated.
Uncle Joe is...
- mysterious
- nefarious / smarmy (initially)
- evidence that an elite exists
- mixed up with this elite
- disenchanted with them (how did this happen)
- is a rogue force within the elite
- plotted their demise
- was always a trickster suicide cocktail (how did the Clique not see, how can immortals be blinded)
- what if he had a familiar like Jiji in Kiki's Delivery Service? His phone, a stuffed bunny? Snugs?
an outline (version 1)
challenge the population is a problem narrative
is the audience relieved by seeing consumer culture taken offline.
so many tropes, could all these be coincidence? this is the first hint of global conspiracy
newspaper headline "15 random world ending events and counting, top scientists 'total coincidence', religious leaders ' god still loves us'
the Clique have been damaged in the process
There is definitely a relevant statement to make about current events here and now. Maybe even that's why the movie was paused, because it's a weapon to wield now.
That's what Joe meant by weapons. Art as weapon to transform narratives. Is awareness (from art) beyond the poles of duality, maybe transformed into actions with outcomes that fall on the poles. The Architecture of Doom shows how art transformed the world, helped along by a Clique. How some art was deemed decadent or degenerate because that awareness would lead where?
What other weapons could he be referring to? He doesn't say because every Clique members knows already. But we as the audience get to find out.
Show things too, hear things other than dialogue. Maybe this is a giant museum of exposition techniques.