A Writer Learns A Few Lessons From Squid Game

 

Squid Game was my first taste of K-drama. I am not a fan of the survival of the fittest/horror genre,not even one illustrating the theme of the end of childhood innocence. But the social media hype sucked me in and I found myself hooked right away. This post is not about ways to survive the games, there are plenty of those tips all over. I write books for young people, and most of the mentor texts I use are other books. Still, I now use lessons from Squid Game to help improve my writing.

Believe In Yourself And Your Work.

Sometimes I wonder if repeated rejections mean an old piece of writing should be tossed. For Hwang Dong-hyuk, the writer/director of Squid Game, the answer was to never give up, not while he believed in his work. He began trying to market the story of Squid Game in 2008, only to receive a succession of emphatic rejections. He continued shopping it around for a decade until 2018 and Netflix. By then the world had changed. Audiences were more likely to  empathize with the show's characters and not consider them weird. In fact, many of the circumstances depicted in episode 2, aptly named “Hell,” represent economic reality for many individuals in Korea and around the world.

Lesson: Rejection is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it is a matter of timing and having to find an audience, or maybe wait for your audience to evolve.

Market Yourself 

Indian actor Anupam Tripathi, who played the role of Ali Abdul, player #199, constantly markets himself. He was raised by parents who pushed him to give up his dream of acting and get a “real job.” Instead, he applied for an almost impossible to get scholarship from the Korean National University of Arts. While still a student there, he marketed himself by going around to Korean studios asking if they needed a foreign actor? He is now lobbying for a spot in a Bollywood production. and also hopes to be in a historical movie. 

Another actor, Seoul born and raised HoYeon Jung possessed enough confidence to begin working as a model at sixteen, years before she was able to attract an agent. She marketed her way into supermodel status.

Netflix did relatively little pre-release marketing for Squid Game. It became a juggernaut largely through word of mouth, ie the power of social media and networking fans. 

The lesson I take from all this is do as much creative and direct to the ultimate consumer marketing as you can. Let your potential audience see your belief in yourself.

All Characters Matter

The two main characters in Squid Game, Gi-Hun (#456) and Sand-Woo (#218), are played by the well known, award-winning Korean actors Ling Jung-jae and Park Hae-soo. Jung-jae, who became rich from working as a villain, jumped at the opportunity to do play the kind of optimistic, funny character that helped differentiate Squid Game from other entries in its genre. Park Hae-soo started his career in musical theater, and now his acting resume includes major roles in dozens of movies and Korean TV shows. 

The rest of the cast includes relative newcomers, fresh faces who had mostly appeared in “blink and you’ll miss it” background roles. While model HoYeon Jung had faced runways and photographers across the globe, this was the first acting role she had even auditioned for. The confident young woman was in her twenties when she was cast in the very important role of #067, the pickpocket Sae-byeok.

Lessons from all these and other examples: Keep the characters on your page fresh. Let them be different, difficult, and/or quirky. While plot is important for any story, but characters are vital to making viewers and readers care. 

Heo-Sung-tae was a successful thirty-five year old businessman when he decided to join a Korean talent competition called Miracle Audition. His fifth place finish and praise from the judges led him to turn down a promotion to get his foot in the door as a beginning actor. (He had never had an acting class.) Years of work in small parts eventually led to a role as #101, Doek-su, the ruthless criminal Squid Game viewers loved to hate. He had to gain forty quick pounds for the role.  His health was badly affected, and during  several scenes he was forced to stop and vomit.
Lesson: Sometimes characters (and actors) have to suffer for their art.

Write What You Know

Hwang Dong-hyuk, the writer/director, adapted characters, locations and situations from his past. His grandmother once worked at the Ssangmun-dong market, the home of main character Gi-Hun and his mother. The director also attended Seoul National University, enabling him to supply pointers to an actor who portrayed an SNU graduate.

Modeling gigs had HoYeon Jung living in lonely hotels in New York just before she was called to play in Squid Game. The girl from Seoul channeled her New York loneliness into her role as introverted pickpocket, Sae-byeok, contestant #067.
Lessons: The age-old maxim to write what you know remains important. So does the next point:

What You Don’t Know, Learn

Some of my fellow writers have asked about the value of additional schooling for their careers, anything from conferences to an MFA. Anupam Tripathi's scholarship meant a move from India to Korea, and immersion in studying the Korean language.  Studying for his role as a Pakistani immigrant worker in Korea meant reading books, watching documentaries, and spending time meeting with actual Pakistani immigrants. The man who achieved almost overnight fame found a way to give 100% to both his role as a Pakistani immigrant, and to working on his master’s thesis in acting.

Culture matters

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk used many pieces of Korean culture into his underdog survival story. Some viewers outside of Korea did not catch the suicide attempt depicted in one episode. A player dresses in his best clothes and climbs into a bathtub next to a container of burning rocks. People knowledgeable about Korean culture would recognize the suicide intent, just as Americans would be if seeing someone in a closed garage with a car motor running. Breathing the fumes from burning coal briquettes is an unfortunately common method of suicide for the poor in Korea.

The crew rented an underground apartment in Ssangmun-dong province to give the early scenes inside the main character's home an authentic atmosphere.  

Some viewers were dissatisfied with finale, entitled One Lucky Day. For many Korean viewers, the title foreshadowed some events tht occur in the episode. It comes from the title of a story about a rickshaw driver written in 1924 by author Hyun Jin-geon. This book is often taught in Korean schools the way children in the US might learn The Gift of The Magi. The Korean Educational Broadcasting System released a film version of One Lucky Day in 2014. 

Lesson: Pay attention to things left unsaid and unexplained on people with different cultural backgrounds. Fortunately, Squid Game showed it is not necessary for everyone to get every cultural reference. Even people who did not understand everything enjoyed what they saw. And what they saw left them wanting more.

So Does Inclusion

Christian Lagahit, an immigrant from the Philipines, became an actor by accident a few years ago when he accompanied some friends to a set to lend moral support. While he watched the action, a manager yelled at him for being out of position. Once he explained that he wasn’t an employee, he was asked if he wanted to be because they needed more foreign actors in the production. He's been acting ever since, even though he is not fluent in Korean.
Lesson: Right place/right time coincidence is a real thing.

The presence of Anupam Tripathi and Christian Lagahit on the screen left viewers in India and the Philipines wild with enthusiasm. Some Filipinos have contacted Lagahit to tell him he is living the life of their dreams. Others have scolded him for being such a poor player in the marble game. (Hint – it was in the script.) The numbers of people following Tripathi on social media has exploded. He enjoys being recognized everywhere, and is thrilled about being called Ali. He wants to be known for creating a memorable character more than he needes people to know his name.
Lesson: People love seeing versions of themselves. They also enjoy real-life glimpses into other cultures.

A Few Final Lessons

Remain agile and versatile. Squid Game was originally intended to be a two hour movie. When Netflix asked for a nine episode series, the writer/director had to adjust. He did so by adding new characters and an additional suplot, giving rise to detective Jun Ho (played by Wi Ha-joon) and his search for his missing brother. When Covid descended in the middle of production, everyone had to adjust to multiple schedule interruptions due to quarantines.

Finally, Meanwhile, I have started looking closer at foreign films. I have just finished my second K-drama, a 2016 zombie film called Train to Busan, that features one of the actors from Squid Game in one of the lead roles. It's a zombies on a train story, handled very differfently from anything I have ever seen from Hollywood.  And I love it, and one of the best performances by a child actress I have ever seen. 

Setting is one of my big weaknesses.  Squid Game's art director Chae Kyung-sun taught me a lot about using setting and color to strike a balance between dark themes and whimsy. She used lots of pink and other bright colors seldom used in horror stories. The oversized playground equipment was designed to give audiences a feeling of being a small child. The white room successfully brought feelings of lonliness and fear to the audience. The bedroom was designed to give audiences the feeling players were objects stacked on warehouse shelves.

I will be spending  this week watching foreign films made for kids at the 38th annual Chicago's International Film Festival. This year, festival films are available both in-person at the Facet's theater in Chicago, and virtually in front of your own device. I'll be watching films from all over the world from the comfort of my sofa.  If you are interested, take a look at https://cicff38.eventive.org/welcome to see the catalog of films and to purchase tickets. The Festival runs until November 14.